Excuse me?
First, and probably most importantly, the story the documentary is trying to tell is the blow-by-blow of what happened last year. How we got from a place where most people thought was good, or at least not FAIL, to where we are now.
But secondly, and the part that I find most audacious from Chicken Little johnny-come-latelies, is where were you 5 years ago. Oh, that’s right, at anti-Iraq war rallies. If the regulatory system was really a problem why didn’t we hear anything from you then?
Maybe you’ll stop reading, because these are from the so-called MSM (also known as THE ONLY PEOPLE ACTUALLY CALLING AND INTERVIEWING PEOPLE, SO MAYBE THEY AREN’T THE DEVIL)…but I highly recommend the following:
Vanity Fair on Bear Stearns failure.
Washington Post on what led to the housing collapse.
New Yorker on Ben Bernanke and the crisis. (most important reading of the past 2 years.)
New York Times on the role of regulatory agencies and quasi-governmental companies.
New York Times on Paulson’s transformation.
New York Times on the day the government started to privatize the banks.
2 Responses for "Key Reading"
I’m farther ahead of this story than most ‘msm’ publications.
MSM does not ‘interview’ anyone in a real sense of the word - they’re stenographers, and it’s different. MSM outlets are wholly owned parts of a PR system that has entirely decimated it’s own credibility. Perhaps you don’t see these things because you’re a part of it. I don’t know.
re: your linkage:
The VF article is indeed one of the best out there. Which makes me wonder why you linked this POS from WaPo:
“Seen in the best possible light, the housing bubble that began inflating in the mid-1990s was “a great national experiment,” as one prominent economist put it — a way to harness the inventiveness of the capitalist system to give low-income families, minorities and immigrants a chance to own their homes. But it also is a classic story of boom, excess and bust, of homeowners, speculators and Wall Street dealmakers happy to ride the wave of easy money even though many knew a crash was inevitable.”
Endemic. Criminal. Complicity. But MSM can’t use the word ‘criminal’ unless the State gives the OK via a prosecution. So we get to read crap about ‘harnessing the inventiveness.’
It was fucking theft, plain and simple. You think because these guys wore ties they get some special consideration?
The New Yorker piece is character propaganda. Fuck Bernanke.
From the 1st shitty NYT article: “The downfall of Fannie and Freddie stems from a series of miscalculations and deferred decisions, both by their executives and government officials, according to company insiders, regulators, auditors and outside analysts. The companies expanded rapidly in recent years, initially playing down the risks posed by a housing bubble. Then, as the housing slump expanded nationwide, they resisted raising enough new capital that might have provided a financial cushion to weather the storm. Lawmakers, paralyzed by partisan infighting, delayed strengthening regulatory oversight of the politically powerful companies.”
Wrong. No “miscalculations” were made - quite the fucking opposite. These goons KNEW (because they’d been talking to Andrew Mozillo - Countrywide) the Ponzi scheme they were participating in. We KNOW this because we’ve read the memos.
None of your links discuss the role of the ratings agencies in LYING to the world about the quality of products they were selling/insuring. Banks didn’t “pile on risk” as your links suggest - remember all that shit was rated “AAA” - the LOWEST risk avail to the market.
The ratings agencies were on the take the ENTIRE time (I wish I could show you a thing I saw in a lobbyists office) rating piles of reeking shit as “GOLDEN”, and happily taking fees to do so.
But blah blah blah. Here are some links to what *I* think are req’d reading for anyone trying to get a grasp of how huge and final this thing really is.
Excellent post and fine links! This econonmic situation is just plain awful, and it’s not hard to see why. Sadly it’s hard to live through it
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