Frontline: Money Power and Wall Street

I like to get a close-up look at the people, the settings, and the situations in this big bit of history. I have always been pleased by the production values, editing, pacing, clarity, and all other aspects of Frontline productions. Since I have done some fairly extensive reading in these topics, I should not have been surprised at how basic this stuff is. It does not delve at all into why various entities would use derivatives, and how these instruments benefit us in things like (relative) stability of prices. So, there is perhaps a bias tending to make us "feel something" more for the Occupy people pepper-sprayed and screaming for the camera, without a lot of context like, what had preceded this, and were they injured? The plot line of big evil nefarious bankers and innocent regular folks is strong. We likewise do not see any systematic study into how much people (consumers or legal persons like cities) who signed deals were consciously gambling with the nice plush loan money they received, and now are so wretched when their gambles did not play as they wished. (Had they won, they would have kept the proceeds with no complaints, and this show wouldn't exist. They would be living in their dream palaces with, one imagines, no gratitude either. But they lost, so they want to blame someone for deals they signed.) As usual in today's politics, we get a hacked off narrative where one or another group are designated villains and free-riders, and everyone else victims. I imagine these young Occupy people (now stripped of some expectations) were fed a line by their Boomer parents who had negative savings and kept refinancing the house until they hit a wall: blame the bankers! And as long as we play this cartoon version of reality, it will continue to be fashionable to carelessly sign into loans and take piles of money and scream later when we have squandered the money, and our fantasy (of course) does not come out as fantasized, that it is someone else's fault. Whereas a little common sense and integrity and admitted one's own fault would undo this silly Gordian knot of blame-hurling politics, from both sides. And with all due respect for PBS and Frontline, I think they play somewhat into this.On the other hand, I think Frontline, to its credit, was pretty cautious and even-handed with the fear and complexity of mess and the daunting challenges faced by the incoming Obama administration upon their arrival in DC. Short of a massive war, it was about as bad a moment to assume the presidency as one could imagine. I agree with one commenter here that it is hard to prove a negative, i.e., what did NOT happen. What did not happen (and easily could have), in my view, was a high potential of Great Depression 2 and World War 3. I feel the management of the situation, imperfect as it was, spared us that experience. Tim Geithner's role I think was dealt with in a nuanced way, without forcing too much of a conclusion about it. Had that worst case happened, we probably wouldn't be able to debate these matters and fine style points in a forum such as this. And the sober tone of this production does help some reflection along those lines.

Frontline is always top-notch in its investigations. Money,Power & Wall Street takes you into the mining expeditioncommonly known as Wall Street. Our public was seeing the Recession in 2008, yet this documentary uncovers theinitial bad practices of Money manipulators and what led up to it. Personal interviews with some of the high rollersand how the faux banking practices spread throughout the globe. We're still reeling today in 2012. Highly recommend thisstunning bit of history so that you will show it & recommend it to as many people as necessary. If you are not aPBS devotee, please take time to watch any FRONTLINE investigation, if nothing else. Being properly informed shouldbe a Liberty for all citizens to take advantage of. If you are an Educator, buy this for your classroom or school library.

This traces the story of the development of the Global Financial Crisis. It finishes with a warning that the Obama legislation to prevent Wall St ever again bringing the world to the brink again, is in fact full of loopholes, mainly the fruit of wall street heavy campaigning and distributing largesse in W.ashington.Since this documentary, Obama has appointed quite tough police to enforce the legislation. Expect to see a lot of supplementary legislation to make the banks behave responsibly.

Amazing A to Z account of what caused the 2008 crisis. I enjoyed the factual analysis that FrontLine presented letting you understand as time goes by (from early 90's to mid 2000) what caused, how it was prevented a world wide global economic melt down and other preventive measures that should have been taken to avoid this to happen again. I enjoyed the unbiased documentary. Even though it was +4 hours long it went by quickly.

Very thorough examination of the cause and effect of the Financial Meltdown, not only on America, but on the world economy as a whole. I would certainly recommend this as a "must see " to anyone who wants to delve deeper into how and why this happened.

A fantastic documentary. I took pages of notes while watching this. Very good.

A thorough, informative and valuable investigation. I thought the first episode, investigating the origins of the 2008 credit crunch was the best one. The final two hours were interesting in revealing the political and financial reactions to the earlier problems.

Dark Money to destroy the wealth in the high stakes profitable of valueless unethical financial institutions. Power corrupted. Absolute power corrupted absolutely of the Too big To fail, and for sure it did collapse, sinking like a Titanic. The wall stumbled into rubbles, the remnant of shady workmanship, and the street led to ruin.

As always PBS doesn't disappoint. If you ever wanted to know exactly how the meltdown happened and what caused it this explains it all without going deep into a lot of complicated financial jargon but rather clear cut explanations of the complicated financial stuff us non-wallstreet people can understand.

Superb treatment of the Wall Street Crash; lots of history, lots of detail, all clear enough for any viewer.