Meltdown
When it comes to financial collapse documentaries, the public canon has one well-deserving Oscar Winner, “Inside Job”, and one straight to HBO exercise in ass kissing and name dropping which shall remain nameless. Ironically, just like during the Arab Spring, it is that “dubious” Al Jazeera that shows US media how coverage of various matters, either geopolitical or financial, is done.
~Tyler Durden
The corporate media of the United States has given us bits and pieces of the events that led to the financial collapse but it took Al Jezeera to put it all together. Thanks to Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge we can watch a four part series that puts the bits and pieces together. Each part is 40 plus minutes long but if you want to know what happened, how it happened, why it happened and what is likely to happen take the time to watch all four.
Must see TV!
Update:
It has been brought to my attention this was a CBC production not Al Jezeera.
Related:
21 Responses to “Meltdown”
FORTY MINUTES!!
Cripes the original Frankenstein is on. Maybe later.
I just watched Part 1: “The Men Who Crashed The World” and it was breathtaking.
The depth of vicious, malicious, and intentional fraud perpetrated by Banks, Mortgage Companies (case in point: Angelo Mozilo), Wall Street, and their bought and paid for political allies simply boggles the mind!
I certainly hope that a few of the TMV ‘righties’ that claim to know what’s “really happening” in the financial world take the time to watch these programs and give us their “2¢” worth on what they see in these programs. (ie: Why they’re still preaching that it’s all “Joe Six-Packs” fault… He should have known better!)
Allen, You disappoint me – I thought you were someone who wanted to no what was going on.
StevenK, good for you – bookmark the page and watch the rest as you can. It just gets better or worse.
On a lighter note:
49% Of Republicans Don’t Know What The Abbreviation GOP Means
Ron-
Don’t be disapointed. I’ll watch them, but you see, we are on a time budget here…and…well the original Frankenstein requires a piece of the budget.
“The latest Vanity Fair/CBS News poll asked Americans what the abbreviation GOP means, and 49% of Republicans got it wrong.”
now that is funny.
I’ve gone through the first one and half (lost internet in the middle of part II). Loose credit, insiders as regulators, “deregulation” of government power, short term thinking, inter-related weakness (we’re all going down together), and no guts to fix the root problems.
The personalities are new and interesting, but the general core problems, all stemming from a long, massive run of artificially cheap credit, sound right. Everyone likes to get high on that cheap credit, but no one wants to deal with the inevitable crash.
Ron, I think I can help our friends out. Try this.
This or something along its lines is the explanation I hear most often from the right for the cause of the meltdown. Have I missed anything?
I became a grandfather last night. I will watch the documentaries when I calm down.
Life has too few of these moments.
Congratulations merkin, Grandchildren are so much easier than children… And so much fun to spoil and then send home!
“Have I missed anything?”
Okay, Merkin, you covered the Republican talking points quite nicely. Although yes, Fannie and Freddie were big enablers, which Part I glossed past with a “loans were repackaged by Wall Street” line.
As I said before, two decades of low interest credit have come back with a vengeance, and all the Fed seems to be able to do, is keep pushing low interest and loose money to the banks and financiers.
Gee, I wonder why that doesn’t seem to be working?
One other thing, Merkin. Congratulations on the new grandchild. I’m officially jealous.
An obstructionist tea-party controlled republican majority in the lower-house would be my guess… And with their 12% approval rating it would seem to be the opinion of about 88% of your fellow Americans.
Earlier in this thread Elwood said:
But now he is saying:
Which is it Elwood:
I don’t think you can have it both ways.
@SteveK
Why do you think they’re in conflict? And why do you think the Democrats are any different from the Republicans, especially in light of Frank-Dodd?
Yup, Prof., they seem to be similar in their mismanagement styles and cronie attitudes except perhaps with slightly different people that they are beholden to.
Great photography, music pacing, watched Part 1. But the emperor and his missing clothes are missing. Emperor FNMA/FDMC are critical to assessing cause and blame. Their enablers, both Rep and Dem administrations and the Sorcerers Apprentices, Dodd and Frank (my apologies Mickey, great film)not mentioned. BS, that’s like describing the Nazi’s world or the Soviet world but leaving Hitler and Stalin out. While I like fantasy a lot, I prefer 24 Hours better than this flawed product.
Congrats merkin! That trumps all political nonsense for sure.
The tricky thing about 4 part series dduck is they work on a timeline.
Part 1 “The Men Who Crashed The World” ended with Lehman Brothers filing bankruptcy on September 15, 2008 and even though it did show Emperor Bush he wasn’t actually one of “The Men Who Crashed The World”
Maybe the “Emperor” that you are referring to, and seems to want to be responsible, will show up in Part 2… or Part 3… but for sure by Part 4.
Stay tuned… There will be plenty of time to blame it all on the “other side.”
Just finished watching “Part 2: A Global Financial Tsunami” which documents how shady “Financial Derivatives” dreamed up and sold by “US Power and Money, Inc.” and sold in International Financial Markets was the major cause of the “Global Financial Tsunami.”
“In the second episode of Meltdown, we look at how the financial tsunami swept the world. We hear about a renegade executive [AIG] who nearly destroyed the global financial system [bailed out by Paulson] and the US treasury secretary” [Paulson] who bailed out his friends.”
This episode also includes an excerpt of President Bush meeting with financial leaders of the European Governments in 2008 and acknowledging that the U.S. (Wall Street, Banks & Financial Industry) bore the primary responsibility for the 2008 international financial crisis.
Maybe evil Democrats and the sins and omissions of President Obama will finally be exposed in Part 3: “Paying The Price”… Or by Part 4 at the very latest.
I’ll be watching Part 3 tomorrow evening and let you know.
Part 4 conclusion: well, I’m not going to spoil the movie, but for some reason easy credit (the mother’s milk of the crisis) got only a brief mention in the beginning, and the GSEs were casually hidden under loan repackaging. Very briefly, at around the 30 minute mark in part II, one guy comments that the international consensus was a good sign for a world government.
Methinks their bias is showing, but the personalities and international interaction were very interesting.