Dear FRONTLINE,
Barney Frank is the true Teflon man. He was up to his eyeballs in both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and yet it is Bush that caused all the problems by telling those agencies to push for loans to people with low income. (And he says it with a straight face) Lately he is talking about how TARP did not work because the Bush administration had no oversight on the program. Maybe he should have written oversight provisions into the legislation he wrote.
Tim Synk
Strongsville, OH
FRONTLINE's editors respond:
FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk addressed this issue in his chat on washingtonpost.com: "Senator Dodd and Congressman Frank are included in our program as witnesses in specific meetings that are central to our inquiry. We offered many republican senators and congressmen equal opportunities to talk about those meetings. They chose not to participate."
Dear FRONTLINE,
I'd like to see a follow up to this program too. I'd like to know 1), How the system is GOING to be changed so this will never happen again and 2), How the Banking CEO's, Banks, Mortgage companies, Real Estate brokers, and money managers will be punished for their greed that has/could bring down our Banking/Money system.
This mess has shown a BIG problem in our capitalist system. Small groups of greedy people can wreak the driving economy for the rest of us. I want to know that the people have their hands on the wheel. Not some over-educated, numbers crunching nerd who wants to find a new way to go around moral hazards, knowing that systemic risk will never be tolerated by our government. They're bright people, you can't tell me they didn't know what they were doing in the first place...
P McKibben
Toccoa, Georgia
Dear FRONTLINE,
I have 2 comments:
1. How is it that all these financial companies were allowed to become so big in the first place? Federal regulators (lol) seem to dwell on the "anti-competitive" nature of mergers that create these behemoths. I would suggest that other criteria like the impact on the economy of failure should be considered as well. BoA is a prime example of the next domino waiting to fall.
2. I believe that the financial system is so complex that it is beyond the ability of politicians to understand, much less regulate. Hence lobbyists from the financial sector end up writing the laws for congress. This is a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house.
Good program. I also like the idea of going way way back and looking for the origins of this fiasco. Please name some names so that we know who did what and when.
Alpharetta, GA
Dear FRONTLINE,
Dear Frontline,
I've watched "Frontline" for 15 years, I've never seen a more disappointing documentary than "Inside a Meltdown."
Did the show intend to suggest that the meltdown of Bear Stearns was the cause of the current financial crisis? That's how it appeared. I'm sorry, but as dramatic as it may appear to you guys, the story here is not about a bank run at Bear Stearns triggering a "cascade." The story is about three bigger questions:
1. The US has largely deregulated the financial sector, moving very deliberately from a system of government oversight to a system where the private sector is supposed to offer the market oversight: Moody's, S&P; the Big Four Accounting Firms, etc. It's been fairly obvious for some time (Enron) that private sector regulation has been failing, this has had profound consequences.2. The US has developed an economy based overwhelmingly on consumer spending -- 70% of total GDP. The vast majority of US consumers are in the middle class. Wages & savings for the middle class have been stagnant or shrinking for 20 years.3. The real estate bubble was a perfect storm that exposed the dangers of 1 & 2.
"Frontline" missed a great opportunity to dive into a fascinating story & instead relied on a very thin, linear story -- well worn at this point -- that seemed simplistic & lazy.
A few additional points:
1. This show could have been 2 hours long.
2. Why not start with two very illuminative precurors to the current crisis: 1) the collapse of Long-term Capital Management and 2) the collapse of Enron. Both these things occurred on Clinton's watch & therefor illuminate the actions of many of Obama's current financial team..
3. The producers on this show suffer from a total lack of imagination -- why not find producers who know how to tell a story like this with creativity. These guys think canned music over still photos is great way to spice up a story. It's not, it's sad.
I wish you luck on future endeavors.
Tim Gallagher
Boston, MA
Dear FRONTLINE,
Please do a set of shows that lays out a comprehensive integrated analysis of: the growth of the market P/E ratio from 14:1 to present, the decrease in the personal-savings-rate, the increase in borrowing/leveraging by individuals, business and government, and how these (and other socio-economic factors) have brought us here.It is especially important that your producers and editors not pull any punches in getting at and telling the whole story; there is plenty of responsibility to go around. The final episode should cover the wisdom of our founding fathers and others who have warned us against excess.
john carroll
great neck, ny
Dear FRONTLINE,
I worked on Wall Street from 1969 to 1989.. What a laugh..I actually looked forward to seeing this show. I remember Hayden Stone, Dean Witter Shearson Hammill and all those buy outs....then less than 10 years later AGAIN.....then the S&L's and again and again......Same old Same old..where did this melt down start? You can point to Greenspan. When Greenspan replaced Paul Vocker he replaced a philosophy of lmited regulation to deregulation.."No Gov't is better Gov't"..then here comes Greenspan and Clinton who exaccerbated that deregulation by encouraging "creative financing", more liberal home loans and cancelling legislation what was put into place during the 30's after the big D. During all this Greenspan would warn about bubbles BUT HE WAS CREATING THEM. You guys missed the ball. It's that blind eye you reporters turn when you don't want to see what really happened. IT will come out. IT WAS THAT CHANGE OF PHILOSOPHY WHICH THEY IMPLEMENTED FROM 1990 to 2004 that killed us...Thanks Alan Greenspan and a special thanks to bill clinton.
Is that the bill clinton that is yelling the loudest..."NOT Me".
To Obama's credit he has brought back Paul Vocker.ROFL
Nora Halpert
Miami Beach, Fla
Dear FRONTLINE,
-The root cause of this is the failure of Big Government--making money too easy allowing speculation to cause a bubble.
The Governments FDIC also plays a significant part not stimulating depositors to shun banks that were too highly leveraged.The self correcting mechanism was short circuited---as it is with any bailout and "stimulus" and support payments.This will prolong the agony.
joan murphy
Rooseveltown, New York
Dear FRONTLINE,
Should someone go to jail?
mon, PA
Dear FRONTLINE,
I must say that I am troubled by hearing that the so-called experts are blaming those who didn't vote for the TARP the first time. They even commented "They [congressmen] have no idea what was really happening". This is just too biased a point of view this program presents. As if it is trying to convince all viewers that government did the right thing with tax payers' money. History will NOT be kind to Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke. We shall see soon enough.
Bolto Cavolta
Seattle, Washington
Dear FRONTLINE,
I understand that the show was only an hour, but why was there no mention of the government intervention in the housing market that started this whole thing years ago? Had the government not leaned on lenders so much to practically give a loan to anyone with a bank account, none of the wall street crooks would have dreamed up any of this insanity.
Robert Thompson
Lafayette, LA
Dear FRONTLINE,
I am Amazed at Frontline.
Despite any criticisms I see here, you have done an excellent job in including the minimum necessary elements while retaining 'watch-ability'. None of these events were news to me. I struggle to teach 'episodes' of the unfolding crisis and can't imagine trying to capture the essence of the chronology in one hour. While some may complain about the focus on personalities - that part is absent from most news coverage and perhaps necessary to keep the viewer in touch with the story.
I see so many criticisms about what 'wasn't' in this episode - this isn't a Wagnerian Opera Cycle (though I guess it could be the basis for one). Thank you for capturing the elements and providing the website for further content and analysis.
Jane Winzer
Fairbanks, AK
Dear FRONTLINE,
An excellent report from the collapse of Bear Stearns to the implementation of TARP. The speed and severity of the collapse is just astonishing. Fannie, Freddie, Lehman, AIG all unraveled within weeks.
It's interesting to look at some of the decisions that were made and looking back, I can understand at that time why those decisions were made. The shotgun marriage of JP Morgan and Bear Stearns, allowing Lehman to go under, saving AIG, nationalizing Fannie & Freddie, and why TARP was changed from purchasing illiquid assets to bank capitalization (too little, too late because of Congress not acting quickly enough). One wonders how much worse the crisis could have been if Paulson didn't use his Wall Street experience to act quickly and Ben Bernanke's understanding of the Great Depression. It was easy to criticize them back then but now it's clear just how close it was to a uncontrolled panic.
The fact that we are not out of this mess and with no clear solution in sight, this should be an ongoing series.
More reports on detailed analysis of how the investment banks levered themselves to such catastrophic proportions, the shadow markets, the lack of regulatory oversight, detailed look at effects around the world, the details of the TARP and why it was changed so the public has better understanding, the shotgun marriage of Merrill Lynch and Bank of America and a look towards the future with lessons learned and proposed solutions from the best minds.
Wildomar, California
Dear FRONTLINE,
This is a magnificent documentary achievement, all the more valuable for its clear focus on events of only weeks ago.
The documentary left us with the most comprehensive understanding of how the meltdown happened, and some of the chief players responsible.
Most important, it leaves painfully apparent that old doctrines about separation of government from the market are not only unrealistic, but never were viable, in the first place. Wall Street is too important to be left to only the banks.
Bob Greene
Columbia, SC
Dear FRONTLINE,
This is a magnificent documentary achievement, all the more valuable for its clear focus on events of only weeks ago.
The documentary left us with the most comprehensive understanding of how the meltdown happened, and some of the chief players responsible.
Most important, it leaves painfully apparent that old doctrines about separation of government from the market are not only unrealistic, but never were viable, in the first place. Wall Street is too important to be left to only the banks.
Bob Greene
Columbia, SC
Dear FRONTLINE,
As I watched your program, I could not help but wonder why the chairmen of the congressional finance committees, Representative Barney Franks and Senator Chris Dodd, were not pressed to answer why they chose not to take more forceful, and vocal, positions on the crises they purport to have seen arising. Why the pass?Thanks for your otherwise solid work -
Rick Thomas
Honolulu, Hawaii
