CNBC's 'House of Cards' explains financial crisis

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

http://www.newsday.com/services/newspaper/printedition/exploreli/ny-etbot6031214feb12,0,1297021.story
CNBC's 'House of Cards' explains financial crisis

Verne Gay
February 12, 2009
skip

Faber talks to many people who were involved in the subprime boom and its collapse. There's also a probing interview with former Fed chief Alan Greenspan. Faber even travels to Norway to find a town nearly ruined by an exotic security specimen called a collateralized debt obligation. You'd think mea culpas would abound, but he uncovers none: Even Greenspan admits there was nothing he could do to avert one of the great economic crises of modern history.

BOTTOM LINE Because this superb piece of explanatory journalism debuts in Thursday night prime-time mayhem, it might need to be seen at another time. A terrible shame if it's not, because we need to see and absorb cautionary accounts like this - one with its eyes wide open and the right questions asked. "House of Cards" is the single best account of the collapse I've seen anywhere.

Tonight at 8pm also shows on Saturday. Sounds like it would be worth watching.

[Zenlitened]

1. Unless the first segment is devoted to APOLOGIES...

... from the CNBC talking heads, I don't think it's going to be worth watching.

They've been in active denial from the very start, nearly two years now at a minimum.

They actively FOUGHT any suggestion that things weren't quite right with the economy, even as the smoke began to billow and the flames began to catch.

Even this morning, that gang of boot-lickers and sycophants to the kleptocracy was mocking any suggestion that the Little People might have a valid complaint and the Big Shots might need to make a concession or two.

They missed the biggest story in the past 80 years of financial journalism. And they're proud of it.

Bear that in mind, folks, if you tune in for tonight's docudrama.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. PBS Frontline has Inside the Meltdown starting February 17

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/
FRONTLINE investigates the causes of the worst economic crisis in 70 years and how the government responded. The film chronicles the inside stories of the Bear Stearns deal, Lehman Brothers’ collapse, the propping up of insurance giant AIG, and the $700 billion bailout. Inside the Meltdown examines what Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke didn’t see, couldn’t stop and haven’t been able to fix.

At least we're starting to get some more in depth explanations.

[Postman]

3. Will there be any mention of the GREED ?

Or will these Frontline reports cast everyone as acting in the public interest with altruistic intentions and they just got blindsided....in other words, create another mythological moment in American history to go with the rest of "official" US mythology.....

[HughBeaumont]

4. Not on CNBC, unless it's followed by the words " is good."

2/3rds of their guests are either free trader stooges, flat taxer stooges or Republican Bewshite sore loser doom-n-gloomers.

[Postman]

5. I read your response to a post......

it was awesome....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5020558#5021664

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Postman]

7. Dude....

the major problem wasn't that people were getting into homes that they couldn't afford (although that is a minor problem created by the likes of Alan Greenspan with his advocacy of people going out and getting these loans that were unaffordable)....

it's that the Banks and the Wall Street gamblers created all sorts of NEW methods of gambling on those bad mortgages....Credit Default Swaps, Derivatives, et;c, etc...they created soo many of them that it crashed the system and is currently the 900 pound gorilla in the room that you never hear any of them talking about...

Listen to Thom Hartmann explain this stuff and you'll end up wanting to lock these bastards away for life and throw away the key....

[scheming daemons]

8. Listen troll...

That is FALSE.

Banks were NOT forced to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back.


The blame lies with former Republican Senator Phil Gramm and the Gramm-Bliley-Leach Act of 1999.


You are buying into the falsehoods being told to you by Rush and Hannity.


Go back to FR.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

9. I saw it and I recommend it .

Pretty good elementary explanation of the housing meltdown.

Did a good job of covering subprime mortgages, CDOs, Wall Street underwriting of subprimes, creation of securities, how they were rated and sold and how the impacted buyers who trusted AAA ratings and how they were sold on the international markets. Just a tiny bit on hedge funds and CDS, but not bad for the little bit they had.

Alan Greenspan comes off like the biggest moron in history, which just cements my previous opinion of him.