Morning Market Alert for December 29, 2010
Stocks may open higher in light trading. China is cutting exports of rare earth metals. Allstate is suing Countrywide over toxic mortgages. GM may rise after positive analyst calls. BJ’s Wholesale may face a hostile takeover offer from Leonard Green.
On Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, the astonished leadership of the US Congress was told in a private session by the chairman of the Federal Reserve that the American economy was in grave danger of a complete meltdown within a matter of days. “There was literally a pause in that room where the oxygen left,” says Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). As the housing bubble burst and trillions of dollars’ worth of toxic mortgages began to go bad in 2007, fear spread through the massive firms that form the heart of Wall Street. By the spring of 2008, burdened by billions of dollars of bad mortgages, the investment bank Bear Stearns was the subject of rumors that it would soon fail. “Rumors are such that they can just plain put you out of business,” Bear Stearns’ former CEO Alan “Ace” Greenberg tells FRONTLINE. The company’s stock had dropped from 1 to a share, and it was hours from declaring bankruptcy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acted. “It was clear that this had to be contained. There was no doubt in his mind,” says Bernanke’s colleague, economist Mark Gertler. Bernanke, a former economics professor from Princeton, specialized in studying the Great Depression. “He more than anybody else appreciated what would happen if it got out of control,” Gertler explains. To stabilize the markets, Bernanke engineered a shotgun marriage between Bear Sterns and the commercial bank JPMorgan, with a promise that the federal government would use billion to cover Bear Stearns …
Video Rating: 4 / 5
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
silver just smashed its record…. wish i knew about this stuff earlier!
@philwarinsky Fiscal policy has to do with government revenue and taxation. Monetary policy has to do with controlling interest rates, employment etc. These were monetary moves by the Fed and Treasury to prevent a systemic economic collapse. There was nothing fiscal mentioned in the doc. and for the most part it was just a play by play of what happened. If you want to discuss ‘why’ it happened that is another topic and documentary all together. But this was not ‘fiscal propaganda’.
You can’t go through the 2008 crisis without showing this: /watch?v=HaG9d_4zij8
There’s better documentaries out there!
@uzair17raza Imagine a movie, you watch it and then you watch a version with commentary. Yes the commentary is truth and correct, all of the things the voice over highlights did happen, yet you are still watching an ‘imagination’ rather then anything that actually happened. Same applies to this film.
@StanleySweet14 where to start? This doco is full of half truths and outright lies. If you cannot see them then I cannot point them out to you, for your mind is already made up?
@philwarinsky Can you please give us a hint of what you mean by propaganda. This is explaining in detailwhat happened perhaps what you mean by BS is the very fact that the system they were running was designed to come this way eventually. I mean who the fuck studies the depression and yet avoids making a mistake like this. These people are not ignorant, they’re cowards. Quantitative easing will only postpone their cowardly acts
@philwarinsky how is this propaganda? This is just a documentary explaining what happened. What part of this did not happen?
@jscottupton lol that was funny.
We’ve brought the world to the brink of financial armagedon, now it’s all down to you to save us, better not let us down ok! you better do your job properly!!
Captalism in the western hemisphere’s a funny thing.
@lonelytrixter So the question must be asked, why repeal this Glass-Steagall Act that supposedly would stop this type of mess from happening?
The biggest problem I have with this ‘documentary’ is it completely misses how the same right wing, free market ideology that Paulson et all espoused was what allowed the mess to be created in the first place. If regulations like the Glass-Steagall Act and leverage caps were not removed, if the banks were not allowed to operate in secrecy and keep this junk off their balance sheets and if the regulators were doing their jobs properly the mess probably would not have been created.
@princeofstockmarket that is true. Most people dont even understand how stocks work.
Banksters or Gangsters ?
@philwarinsky i almost felt sorry for paulson. buahahaha…
WHy I got a feeling this documentary is NOT neutral?
@CranberryMuffinmanz You don’t understand. There are only 2 types of people. owners and slaves. If you are not one, you must be the other. Slaves have no rights to ask anyone anything.
@princeofstockmarket exactly this is the government stepping in to keep the rich rich, and if some poor guy lost his job and the bank was going to throw him and his family on the street the government wouldn’t give a shit.
@jscottupton
LOL It was supposed to be sarcastic.
Did you catch that last line ? “All eyes are on Barack Obama to turn it all around”. Ha Ha.
@flynn2008 You must have a bad memory.