"Frontline" Alert

There are lots of really good Frontlines about the financial crisis available streaming on Netflix--I'm really looking forward to this. Thank you!

Bankers have ruined the economies of too many countries!

I'll be watching!

I love Frontline!

I wish I could work for them! I would be the happiest person!!!

It is on at ten pm here in Tucson! I have to go to bed early tonight!

The 60 Minutes piece on this from a year or two ago made it clear that they're making no attempt to go after them. Hey, why cut off the money supply?

I will be in bed, but will bookmark this to watch after it airs. Thank you for the heads up!

"Cliffhanger" episode in 3 weeks (I think is what announcer said...).

This is the guy that knows everything.

Every bank in the country has made a shitty loan but was their intent "fraud"?

Impossible to prove.

Kaufman tried and even got legislation signed by Obama to investigate but in the end - nada. Nothing.

Pretty good episode of Frontline though.

Countrywide is the heart of the scandal. That's where I'd focus the investigation.

And a very sleazy one with all their lying about income, assets, and credit.

That hurt the Frontline episode - concentrating on Countrywide for so long.

My point is just that. You start at the beginning. Figure out why Mozilo/Countrywide did what he did, and why he thought he'd get away with it. THEN you go after the big fish on Wall Street.

Justice has no case against Bear Stearns, Lehman, et al.

Why would they defraud themselves?

had someone on who might have actually TRIED to prove fraud/intent. Leaves us

But this latest manufactured crisis? Impossible!

In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/business/14prosecute.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Cheer away.

Everyone wanted in on the never-ending rise in home values.

A classic bubble - just like dot.com stocks in 1999-2000.

what statute says, requires, and how it might be proven.

Too boring and inconclusive.

Many can't follow when they get lost in translation, of the definitions that is.
I am glad they Frontline tried to keep from having unintended misinformation that putting that stuff in could/would cause.

They need a rich kid with an MBA, not too difficult to find, and keep promoting him through the ranks. Because they keep him occupied away from the real decision making, he can plead ignorance of what was going on and the Feds can't possibly prove intent because that was simply not part of his job.

Remember Ken Lay's defense? He had no idea Enron was on the brink of disaster because he was busy redecorating his office. I believed him, I've seen the type they put into those spots and the kind of busywork they do and what sort of decisions they're trusted with.

At least starting with the small fry would allow them to trace the whole process. Making deals with some of the small fry would get them up the food chain to the real scumbags.

Sorry I didn't see the show, so maybe I'm off-base. But.

Bad mortgage loans were the least of the problem. There were lots of bad mortgages, and they were/are a problem, yes. But at least they were secured by physical real estate.

But the reason there were so many bad mortgages made was because there was money to be made off securitizing them.

And even more importantly, there was even more money to be made off of betting about them (the infamous "credit derivatives") – especially off of betting against them, betting that they WOULD eventually crater – as Goldman et al. did in fact bet, even while selling them to others.

And thanks to Paulson, Geithner, Obama, et al, we, YOU AND ME, made good on those bets. They were placed with an insolvent bookie, AIG; and Goldman and the others who placed them knew or should have known AIG wouldn't be able to make good on them; but thanks to Geithner et al, we bailed AIG out; so instead of having AIG go belly-up and letting Goldman et al. take cents on the dollar for their speculative, not to mention felonious claims, through a bankruptcy-like procedure, we enabled AIG to PAY those bets to Goldman et al. To the tune of $16 trillion or so.

And until you understand all that, you don't begin to grasp the looting that has occurred.

they should at the minimum be fired and barred from any further involvement in banking for life.

Instead, they got bonuses. Because they succeeded in what they set out to do.

Note: The reason I'm so sure about all this is because we went through it on a much smaller scale with the S&L mess in the 80's. And we liquidated bad banks instead of bailing them out, and prosecuted their senior execs. and sent them to jail, and there were a few bad years but we enabled the economy to recover without undue delay.

Search William Black, if you'd like to know more.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/untouchables/

Having watched the show on a local PBS station,
my initial reaction is to ask President Obama to ask Lanny Breuer to resign.

I agree with those who say Lanny Breuer is there to prosecute, and not to stay up at night worrying that prosecutions might jeopardize the health of the financial industry

I would argue lack of prosecutions jeopardize the health of the financial industry.

I will say my views of Lanny Breuer, after watching this show, cause me to question his competency.

Didn't see any mention of this. It seems you got a "get out of jail free card" by being a top campaign contributor in 2008. Maybe that will change since Wall Street changed alliances in 2012.

Us: Too Small To Matter.

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