Reply #2: I watched it last night on TV.

[Lasher]

I now understand the derivatives fiasco better than before, particularly where assignment of blame is concerned. Brooksley Born was exactly right all along, but everybody believed Greenspan in particular - a lifelong libertarian Republican who believed the financial services sector would self-regulate. Clinton was a good president overall but he made some big mistakes. In this case, and in the case of his support for global 'free' trade, he failed because he adopted Republican ideology.

We critically need legislation to fix this derivatives nightmare but I'm afraid Obama is too interested in being bipartisan with people who want to perpetuate it. More than that, we need to change our collective mindset so that people are appropriately laughed out of the room or run out of town on a rail if they even dare mention the invisible hand or trickle down bullshit.

The McCain campaign's chief economic advisor was the despicable Phill Gramm. Although he was dismissed for having called us a nation of whiners for daring suggest in 2008 that we might have a problem with the economy, he surely would have played a key role in a McCain administration.

Planning to review a transcript, I hit the Frontline link just now I got this: PBS Web sites are currently unavailable. We are experiencing technical difficulties with Internet connectivity. We will restore service as quickly as possible.

I'm sure they'll have it back up by the time the normal people wake up.

Rec #5.