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Meltdown Part 1: "The Men Who Crashed The World"
When it comes to financial collapse documentaries, the public canon has one well-deserving Oscar Winner, "Inside Job", and one straight to HBO exercise in ass kissing and name dropping which shall remain nameless. Ironically, just like during the Arab Spring, it is that "dubious" Al Jazeera that shows US media how coverage of various matters, either geopolitical or financial, is done. Herein we present the first episode of Meltdown, in which we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne. Considering we are about to experience the next Great Financial Crash, since nothing has changed at all since 2008, this should serve as a prominent reminder of all that happened, and a flashback to the future, of all that is certain to occur all over again.
From Al Jazeera:
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.
But how did it all go so wrong?
Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.
Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.
All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse.
Part 1 of "Meltdown"
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the doc you refer to was drafted by a crowd that supported the idea of a budding empire.
It was built to support an empire and in a spirit of manifest destiny and it worked to support that very well as events have shown.
Use is at an end for those who sit atop the empire thus you best drop it as a point of reference.
That doc is just an old piece of paper as show by the last several admins and their backers. As long as you win and get the power for a few years nobody gives a shit about that old rag.
get over it.
Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.
That's a bit rich. The US mortgage industry had more regulations attached to it by 2008 than any other market in the history of the world. It was government regulations (and agencies and muscle flexing) that helped shoehorn many subprime borrowers into mortgages in the first place.
Touché. The state will never miss any chance of helping a bubble since it profits so much from it.
By the time TSHTF there had been plenty of bad behavior by all interested parties. But "fraud expands to fill the envelope" as they say and in this case the government designed the envelope.
See also: California's electricity "deregulation" policies and Enron.
Just wait until the various interested parties identify the contours of the Obamacare envelope.
Tell the Arabs if they want to grab Hank Paulson et al when he/they visits their country and mete out some local type punishment that would be fine with me.
But so many US citizens will see it as an opportunity to wage a good, lucrative, crapped with opportunities for them war, arabs wont dare.
US citizens want wars and the opportunities coming with them: free tuition, free healthcare, 150k$ per year to get deployed in areas with people fighting the US invaders with rusty AK 47, chinese ammo and shoes with holes in them.
Easy fun park...
Can't you imagine the hour-long tributes we'd see on the tube about the sainted, heroic Hank who pulled us back from the precipice? A faithful family man I suppose. Imagine the playful and benevolent uncle scene: "Here honey, pull my crooked finger".
Part 2, 3 and 4
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/
winning!
I can't find any video for parts 2-4. Am I missing something?
Metldown aired on national TV here. If it's the same series that I'm thinking of, it's all about politicians telling you what they think happened and how it could be prevented but conveniently forgetting the fact that during the bubble they were telling everyone there is no bubble and all the BS you've heard about the housing market when everything was rosy.
Inside Job doesn't even mention bubble inducing government policies as to make the listener think next time, government can really be an answer since it's never the problem you see!
fascinating documentary but I think it's missing one key scene
which I like to call the Commeuppance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKykkbA8gbI [classic 12 second scene in Fight Club]
I'm sure all you Tyler Durden fans will approve...
Thnx Tyler!!!
ONe strange market. Scary.
The housing scam like Private Equity scam was made possible by cheap credit brought to you by shadow banking and Asian dollar recycling. Add to this Asian currency manipulation and favorable tax treatment of capital versus labor, and you create a perfect environment, as Steven Keen calls bankers, for 'cavaliers of credit.'
The genesis of this crisis rests on the shoulders of outsourcing CEOs and Asian mercantilist polices and abolishment of Glass-Steagall Act.
The end result will be classic : the end of global consumerism. Figure this, while Europe attempts to deal with its debt crisis, the Chinese are busy expanding export shipping capacity to European nations. One has to wonder if this yet another short-lived emergence of the Middle Kingdom as an empire during the last 6,000 years.
I didn't really believe the Kennedy Assassination conspiracy, until I saw Watergate, and I didn't really believe Watergate, until I saw the weapons for hostages deal, and later Iran/Contra and the S&L's. I really thought this must all be frat house pranks, until 9/11. I didn't believe 9/11 until I saw Bush reelected, and the war in Iraq, conducted for one man's self aggrandizement. I didn't believe that was possible until I saw the financial crash of 2008, (certainly these political pranks have gone too far). I was certain that we would rectify the events of 2008, figure out what was done, by whom, and to what end, and assign blame, and restore order in the financial community.
Because by now I didn't believe this was an accident at all, coming right before an election, and a president with a shadowy staff involved in all sorts of illegal stuff (where were the Watergate reporters - It's news the first time, the second time it goes on the society page I guess)
Then the new president hardly blinks, puts on that nothing really happened. no one is to blame, move forward. There was always this rule that one party held court on the other, to balance things out. This time it didn't happen, and I thought, boy are we screwed (finally)
Until someone explains to me why ONLY Saudis and their close buds were flying about the country when everything else was grounded and why several rich Saudi fled the country from FLORIDA right before 9/11 and how anyone could think that those 9/11 dudes could roam at will without support inside this country then I don't buy any of the 9/11 b.s.
"investigation".
au contraire...
Full El Al flight took off on 9/11 from JFK to Tel AvivGetting prepared is easy once you accept that the 1st wave shit has come and the big waves of shit are still rolling out on the high seas. You have to be able to operate your life independent of government because all governments want to do is provide, regulate and tax your income and wealth. I will admit that for my person this life changing experience has been more dramatic as I spent a little over 10 years of my life offering and selling financial securities that were considered conservative and safe, finding later that many were nothing but hype and a pile of shit. In leaving the financial securities business I vowed never to be dependent upon corp american ever again, and later never to be dependent upon the silent partner always telling me to he was my pal all the while he was trying to get his grubby hands on the profit of my sweat and toil. for now with every spare available FRN I continue to plow the ground, plant the crops, harvest the produce, and stack the goods.
Different for everyone, and I encourage all to do what they are able under the circumstances.
When the IRS sent agents to my wife's grandfather's farm for the first time to inform him that he had neglected to pay income tax, he beat the living shit out of them, and sent them packing, calling them thieves. He was never prosecuted, as the local sheriff felt the same way. Back in the days when men were men, and bureaucrats were nervous. Now, it is 1984 / Animal Farm all over again. And, Americans are mindless overweight spineless consumers of worthless media vomit. Natural selection will sort things out. See you on the other side of the meltdown, fella's!
Can snakes actually melt? How about Robert Rubin and his knob polisher Timmy G....
Let's give credit to whom it is due. This documentary was produced by the McKenna brothers and aired last year on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Good for Aljazeera for giving it global distribution.
What all of us witnessed back in the 'Housing Bubble days' and how everybody and their grandmother took part makes me laugh about the supposed 'Gold Bubble' mantra today...Rest assured...We still have a long way to go!!
My solution was to give every American, hell every person in the world, 200k US dollars. it would have been cheap compared to what we have today.
Doo-Voo Economics? Trickle Up? Bite your tongue sir! That type of direct inflation is totally unacceptable for those who control those who control those who operate the 'printing presses'.
I've seen this 'tongue' in cheek proposal before, and on the surface it seems laughably naive, yet
1. You're absolutely correct, it could well have been nominally cheaper
2. If banks were ALL reset (shutdown) simultaneously, and all of their insolvency dissolved with them, wouldn't that counteract the 'inflation' effect? Assuming you include credit in your variables for defining inflation, I mean.
Obviously this is an entirely superficial description of the principle, but the idea isn't without its merits, IMO.
yes, but that assumes they are interested in helping the people and not themselves.
Al Jazeera:
"The Men Who Crashed The World: JEWS"
The Expulsions of the Jews Throughout History
Al Jazeera's BBC originsthey forgot the expulsion of jews from what is today Arabia by mohammed's merry band of men
Not enough blow and hookers.
the real question is what part of the world will emerge unscathed and as the new engine of global growth?
North America? NO, bankrupt morally and fiscally
Asia? NO, bankrupt morally and fiscally but nobody has noticed yet
Africa? Next
The "Muslim World"? Donkey carts and nukes. A threat but not a model for free people
Europe? See Muslim World
Latin America? Hmmmm. This may be it.
Inside Job is well worth watching. But presents Barney Frank in a positive light when in fact he was doing everything he could to encourage banks to make subprime loans.
Nothing has been done to fix the basic problems that caused the US housing crisis and Europe's sovereign debt crisis. Derivitives and securitization should be outlawed. Securitization encourages banks to make risky loans because it allows them to shift the risk to someone else. To ensure a stable banking system, the loan risk should be carried by the originator of the loan
Derivitives also encourage banks to make risky loans because they can buy insurance which appears to shift the default risk to someone else. But in fact, this insurance is probably worthless in the case of a systematic collapse.
For seventy years, from the 1930's to the late nineties, we had laws to restrain banks from engaging in risky behaviors and we never had major banking collapses like we are currently seeing. Ten years after those restraints were removed, look what has happened.
There was some hope that Obama might be willing to work to put the limits back in place. I think that hope was one thing that helped him with the independents. But he has done nothing. So we will probably do the same stupid things again in ten or twenty years.
Link to the CBC and the entire series. BTW, you don't have to go overseas to get the truth... at least until the Canadian Prime Minister is fully indoctrinated in Tea Party principals (he's in training as we speak)... lol!
http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/meltdown/videos.html?ID=1604581007
oh lol, didn't see your comment - I posted the cbc doc link right after. good job :P
Though for some reason the website doesn't work well on my computer, I think I haven't watched the final episode... and they aren't well organized.
Isn't this the same Documentary you see on CBC Docs?
www.cbc.ca/doczone/meltdown/videos.html
Contrary to many comments here on ZH alleging these financial market manipulators are stupid morons, they're actually very smart people. But they're criminals. Pirates. Looters. And they're doing a pretty good job of looting everybody.
You have to be pretty smart to keep the entire American govenment looking the other way while you loot the American people. That takes some brains.
Pretty num. You seem to be suggesting that the govt. told the banks to stop being bankers and start being Santa Claus, and they did what they were told. Never mind all those fraudulant securitizations, setting up trusts for short selling and failure, fantasy derivatives, etc.
the USA has become the land of the Comnenos. Their Empire collapsed in 1182. Constantinople was raped by the Venetians and Crusaders in 1204. That's where we might be with king dollar, now in the throes of a Comnenos meltdown. Who will be the NEW VENICE of the new western age...? Euroland, China..? Remember, Venice remained top dog until it was ousted by Florence and Genoa, then France, Spain and Holland.
So we may be moving to multipolar world where power will be transient, from continent to continent.
Read this to understand the beginings of the Comnenos meltdown story :http://www.falakpema.com/buythebook.html
It actually first began before the housing bubble. Following the bursting of the Internet Bubble in March of 2000, the Federal Reserve, in an attempt to boost family net worths that took a pounding, artificially drove short term rates below risk tolerance levels. There was no risk because the risk free rate under the Capital Asset Pricing Model, after inflation, was negative. That effect drove the value of property up as incomes were discounted by lower and lower costs of capital, though incomes themselves were relatively stable. This increased the value of the cash flow that in turn was committed into the housing and commercial development markets, driving the underlying values higher. Until the Ponzi scheme ran its course in 2007 and property values rolled over.
Been the single greatest short position ever for our hedge fund since the end of 2007 as the attendent TBTF banks rolled over and are heading to a true book value that is a multiple negative calculation.
Hilarious shopworn attempt to convince anyone with a brain that "Barney Frank and the negroes" are the reason the global financial system melted down. Right in there with the 9/11 conspiracy, except the "Barney Frank/Clinton caused it" thing purposely ignores that Republicans were in control of all branches of the government when things went down, not Barney Frank or Clinton. De-regulation plus Greed = What We Have. "Freemarket" economics going to it's logical extreme.
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