The Public Broadcasting System’s “Frontline” news program
last night ended its four-hour exhaustive, detailed effort to connect the bones
of America’s
mammoth financial-meltdown skeleton: “Money, Power, and Wall Street.” Overall,
it was a yeoman’s effort, piecing together a chronology to the economy’s
collapse and the major factors involved. The producers also lined up an
extensive gallery of players ranging from Wall Street execs, bankers, politicians,
lawyers, and economists involved in the quagmire.
The news broadcast took pains to simplify a financial network
that endlessly pushes to expand in complexity and opaqueness, control the
economy and government, and avoid regulation. The program also strove to
clarify the major reasons for the meltdown.
Basically,
“Frontline” identified the same fault lines laid out by the Financial Crisis
Inquiry Commission, the 10-member government-appointed panel that investigated
and reported on the meltdown’s causes.
The
commission listed 10 conclusions, including widespread
failures in financial regulation and supervision; dramatic failures of
corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important
financial institutions; a combination of
excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of
transparency; government being ill-prepared and inconsistent in its response; collapsing
mortgage-lending standards, and massive marketing of over-the-counter
derivatives.
The program could have spent more time with the
commission’s chairman, Phil Angelides, former California state treasurer. He seemed to be
one of the few interviewees without a direct stake in the
financial-political-legal ramifications of the meltdown mess, even though his panel
was surely political. In other words, his brief snippets of interview just
seemed to make objective sense.
The other interviews, for the most part, possessed
hedges, as investment types, politicians, and administrative officials
constantly performed to “inform” while covering their posteriors. The absence of interviews with the major
players—George W. Bush, his treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Barack Obama and
his treasurer Timothy Geithner—kept the program from cresting, shielding them
from direct accountability to the public.
But the extensive report showed that both Bush and
Obama proved lightweights in facing the Wall Streeters and bankers, and that Geithner,
former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, remains a cohort of Wall Street.
As does Congress, who has avoided any major effort at
reforming a financial system mired in greed, manipulation, and void of
ethics—which, come to think of it, is a pretty good description of Congress
itself. “Frontline,” when describing efforts at financial-reform legislation,
constantly referred to Wall Street’s lobbyists killing or stifling bills. But
lobbyists, under the Constitution, don’t have the responsibility for writing,
amending and approving legislation. Congress has that. If Congress gives that
up to lobbyists, then voters need to protect themselves from such cowards by
kicking them out of office.
The program, in seeking some reasonable solution to
the meltdown mess, did seem to find a common recommendation from economists and
lawyers: separate the banks from being involved in both securities trading and
regular banking services—basically as banks had to perform before being given a
free hand in the ‘90s. That’s when Bill Clinton, his treasury secretary Robert
Rubin, and Congress scrapped the Glass-Steagall Act, the post-1929 Stock Market
Crash legislation meant to protect the public’s bank investments from
speculation.
Perhaps the “Frontline” report’s most poignant
moment: interviews with young, former Wall Street employees—intelligent, highly
educated, sensitive—who decided to abandon the Greed Breed and join Occupy Wall
Street. One scene even showed them meeting together, sincerely attempting to
draw up suggested Congressional legislation which might bring true reform.
That brief segment, for any aware audience, should
inspire citizens to get organized, get educated, and get active.
The link to Frontline’s “Money, Power and Wall
Street”:
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s site:
An overview of the Glass-Steagall Act:
No comments:
Post a Comment