Dear FRONTLINE,
Wonderful discussion as always with Frontline.
No one seems to understand we are only at the beginning, just like the Great Depression. We do not want to own up to the gragvity of this situation.
Read John Kenneth Galbraith's the Great Crash of 1929 and you see how eerily the facts are a repeat of 1929. No one in 1929 had a clue what was in store for the country by 1932.
Los Gatos, CA
Dear FRONTLINE,
I thank you very much for such an interesting program.
As a fiscal conservative, it saddens me to see this. I think all support for de-regulation is dead at the moment. The conversion of Paulson you showed us is in many ways, reflective of the conversion of many Americans economic ideologies. Very sad to see, honestly.
Again I appreciate the effort you put into this program. And I hope for a follow-up to this program.
From one of the last fiscal conservatives, I thank you.
Edmonds, Washington
Dear FRONTLINE,
To read the follwoing comment/questions, "However, we are unclear why Bears Sterns started to fail initially. Was it just the Wall Street rumor mill running amok?" leaves me confounded. As an aside, I found myself thinking, "...none of these men and women feel the pain of unemployment, low wages or poverty." Your report further clarified to me that our leaders are indeed insulated and irresponsible. I felt like I was watching a play with actors and actresses reading their lines without knowledge that THEY are the reason why our country's financial state is bankrupt.
Oh yes, the answer to the aforementioned question? Bad banking decisions rooted in short term profit taking. In one word? Greed.
Wayne Spinney
Lake Oswego, OREGON
Dear FRONTLINE,
I hope your future coverage will extend your investigative timeline to the period prior to summer 2007. Past the April 14, 2005 signing of the so called "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act". Beyond the rise of credit derivatives, credit default swaps, and hedge funds. Back to the first of the Federal Reserve's many post 911 rate reductions.
Perhaps then, equipped with that information, those of us far removed from the centers of power in this country can begin to understand the linkage between the actions of those in Washington with which we entrust our government and those on Wall Street with which we entrust with our money, jobs, and homes.
Bellevue, WA
Dear FRONTLINE,
What scares me about this crisis is the ineptitude of the government to anticipate what the fall-out of these creative mortgages would be and the failure to step in and provide some regulations when it became clear that the housing market was ballooning to a ridiculous level, which had to burst.
As a homeowner, I knew that some of these loans that were being offered were crazy and doomed to fail. How could the government not know this? Even scarier is the approach they had to solving the problem.
How could Paulsen make unilateral decisions about who to give bail-out money too, without having knowledge of the impact of these decisions on the global financial market? Why did he not do some research to find out how many major banks and corporations would be affected by the decisions that he made. He's got people, doesn't he? For him not to know that the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers would lead to a domino effect of failures is inexcusable. And this seems to be the way that the government often operates. Make a move, then wait and see what happens instead of thinking things through and consulting with parties who might be affected.
If he had done this, instead of trying to be the big man on the white horse, then maybe he could have made better decisions. I have little faith that the government can do anything right. Healthcare? Forget about it, even with this government for change.
Redondo Beach, CA
Dear FRONTLINE,
"Inside the Meltdown" clearly demonstrates the preventive need for effective and adequate government oversight/regulation of the "free market", particularly the financial and banking system. Lack of government oversight/regulation caused this financial crisis, and the catastrophic consequences and bank failures of 2008 forced even Treasury Secretary Paulson, a staunch laissez-faire Republican, to accept the reality that government intervention of the banking & insurance industry was critical to the survival of the US and global financial system.
Ari Miller
Dayton, Ohio
Dear FRONTLINE,
I really appreciate you airing this informative program.
It's chilling ending left me with a few questions: Where will these trillions of dollars come from? Are they created out of thin air? And what will this do to the value of the dollars that already exist? Is the US dollar the next victim of systemic risk?
Eric Watson
los angeles, california
Dear FRONTLINE,
It's a surreal experience to watch all of those who were interviewed for this piece -- the CEO's, the politicians, the Wall Street reporters -- explain away their deriliction and / or their complicity by saying that they had no warning that their house of cards would ever collapse. I guess they were all so busy watching the hacks on CNBC that they never stopped to think that it might be important to check whether or not a borrower could repay the incredibly stupid loans they were making, and to morally evaluate the crooked deals they were making. It's like someone who takes a flame thrower to a house, then looks at the pile of ashes and says how could that happen?
Joe Ely
Pleasanton, CA
Dear FRONTLINE,
Your story tonight started in the middle. Repeal of the glass segal act origination of the Credit Default Swaps and no regulation of a Trillion dollar industry (Mortgage Origination). In the next part a interview of Robert Rubin would tie all these issues together
Jerry Henke
Puyallup, Washington
Dear FRONTLINE,
Tho well done, I agree this program didn't go far enough. History has repeated itself; we could benefit by seeing the patterns. I want Frontline to do a multi-part series addressing the financial picture from Teddy Roosevelt trust-busting, Great Depression & FDR on through Reagan, S&L bailout, Glass-Stiegel repeal, mass deregulation...to meltdown. Apparently we're not mature enough for free markets. And the real moral hazard is greed.
P Chaddock
Talent, OR
Dear FRONTLINE,
I am disappointed that Frontline's report was nothing more than regurgitation of the Wall Street Establishment's version of reality, and from the mouths of the same people who tell us that version of reality every day. Accordingly, we heard not one word about fraudulent trading practices in U. S. financial markets, which were driving forces behind each of the events (Bear Stearns, Fannie, Freddie, Lehman and AIG) on which you reported at length. Is that because Frontline is uninformed on that level of reality (surely not!), or because Frontline, too, has been co-opted by those large money pools that sway other media and political leaders so effectively? Please don't tell me you didn't mention the fraudulent trading practices because you didn't want to frighten investors. Most investors have already been driven from the markets by those influences, which are known to others throughout the country and around the world. You should press government to deal with that lawless reality, which is something government is supposed to be capable of doing, while it certainly cannot replace private initiative in the economy.
Wayne Jett
San Marino, CA
Dear FRONTLINE,
If the regulators regulated the toxic materials from the outset,by applying the same CFTC rules, this could have been avoided.But wall ST could not have gererated the kind of bonuses that they wanted and had.If we dont have universal clearing and mark to market, I am afraid that we are throwing good money to bad to preserve the ill gotten bonuses.
geoffrey chang
Pt Roberts, WA
Dear FRONTLINE,
Frankly this was the scariest Frontline I have seen since the piece you did years ago on Three Mile Island. If this catastrophe does not bring political and economic theory ideologues back to the same planet that the rest of us live on, I'm not sure what will. The irony is this: I was aware of the consequences of the real estate meltdown three years ago when I visited the once vibrant neighborhoods of my childhood in North St. Louis, Missouri. I now live in Sacramento in an area that has been ravaged by the economic meltdown. This consequence is directly related to the sub-prime mortgages that have victimized soon-to-be-retirees and many, many working class racial minority families including my former neighbors who are Hmong.
Although this episode of Frontline did not discuss solutions, I would suggest you explore options such as shared real property ownership, community-based lending, and other innovations that shift housing from a source of wealth to a source of stability.
Sacramento, California
Dear FRONTLINE,
People we were told were leaders in the industry, Harvard graduates, yayda yada, selling investment crack. The heads of these organizations should have been stripped of all benefits and placed where ordinary people had ended up, in social housing with food banks, not federal banks. God help us if that is the best in the industry.
Lillooet, BC Canada
Dear FRONTLINE,
Yes, the bankrupcy of capitalism renders no choice but to shape now the emerging world order in benevolent and forward-think ways. The knowledge is here and the resources still exist. It will take the will of people by the millions.
The true gift of Bush and this meltdowm in that now we can get on with it. There is no turning back.... Corporations with the rights of individuals anfd individuals with the freedom to abandon law and act outside of morality must end. The law must be brought to bear, and the crimes of those responsible for our crisis must be brought to light. Unless this happens, we will delay what must come. We are in charge...
Paul Schultz
Eugene, OR
