Lessons from last night's Frontline: Inside the Meltdown

[Ilsa]

Here is a link to watch the program online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/

There is alot anyone can learn from the program. Here's an idea or two:

1. Even a schmuck like Paulson can learn that pure free enterprise isn't always safe for the country's or world's economy. He had to come to terms and do some stuff that I bet he never would have considered doing five years ago.

2. We can't allow financial institutions to exempt any paper from regulation. (Way to go, Phil Gramm :sarcasm: )

Name your own...

[tridim]

1. The only thing I learned is that the Wall Street investment banks..

are all one gigantic company with separate buildings and different names on the door.

I almost wish I didn't know that.

[tech3149]

2. When you lobby for lax regulation and oversight

Don't bitch when your flakey, over leveraged financial instruments turn out to be the toxic sludge you should have known it would be.

[Gregorian]

3. It just seemed to me that the size of these companies was far too big.

That in itself is partly what created such a disaster. Since they depend upon image, and that image can be melted in a soundbite.

I think we should limit the size of companies. It would also allow small businesses less friction to starting up. These big companies cause all kinds of problems as opposed to whatever increased value their size may provide.

This would also have the added benefit of keeping people like Murdock from becoming ultra powerful.

[Ilsa]

5. Yeah. I watched regional banks become extinct in the 1980s. Interstate

banking was permitted and soon half (hyperbole) of the banks in Texas were owned by someone in North Carolina or NYC. And then 25,000 jobs disappeared in this one state. And did the cost of banking go down? Hell no. The shareholders got bigger dividends and the money from around here ended up in NYC.

A company should only be allowed to get big enough that failing doesn't place the global economy at risk of collapsing.

[valerief]

4. They know what they're doing. They make out. They don't care as long as they make out. nt