The Beginning Of The End.

February 20, 2009 2:21 PM

Frontline: Inside The Meltdown. Synopsis here.

There is an interactive timeline at the bottom of the first link.

posted by gman (47 comments total)

That video looks sharp, huh? They have got a really talented dude working on that-- I heard on the street that the bandwidth constraints on the video are really tight.

And don't miss the timeline. Whomever chose those shots to illustrate it is some sort of genius.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:35 PM on February 20 [8 favorites has favorites]

Whomever chose those shots to illustrate it is some sort of genius.

Some sort. Not the grammatical sort, though.
posted by dersins at 2:38 PM on February 20 [2 favorites has favorites]

Some sort. Not the grammatical sort, though.

You think your pedantry/dirty socks can stop me?

Well, they are making me dizzy.
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:59 PM on February 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

They have got a really talented dude working on that

Bah! My kid could do that!
posted by cortex at 3:05 PM on February 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

You're all going to be fuckin' homeless and malnourished soon.
posted by gman at 3:08 PM on February 20

That video looks sharp, huh?

What is that anyway? Looks like some of the text is rendered locally over the compressed video.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:11 PM on February 20

I'm confused. At the bottom of the transcript, it tells me that I should "watch onlin", but I can't figure out who Onlin is.
posted by davejay at 3:12 PM on February 20 [2 favorites has favorites]

LISTEN UP YOU KIDS! If I hear any more guff outta any of you on this trip, I'm pulling this recession documentary right the hell over and you can all walk back to Prosperville! You hear me??? NOT ANOTHER WORD!
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 3:12 PM on February 20

I'm a huuuuge Frontline fan, but this one disappointed me. I felt like it was a mostly superficial look at what happened and didn't explain much.

If I hadn't heard the This American Life podcasts about the economy, I might have felt differently though. I just felt like TAL did a much better job at helping me understand what happened.
posted by Nattie at 3:13 PM on February 20 [2 favorites has favorites]

You're all going to be fuckin' homeless and malnourished soon.

I don't care how poor I get, I would never have sex with a homeless person or one of those super skinny models. Eww.
posted by milarepa at 3:13 PM on February 20 [3 favorites has favorites]

We may all be homeless, but malnourished? More like half of us will be parted out in the freezers and smokehouses of the other half, who will be perfectly well-nourished indeed.
posted by dersins at 3:13 PM on February 20

Clearly, panic is the answer, because it has served us so well in the past.
posted by fleetmouse at 3:15 PM on February 20 [2 favorites has favorites]

Recession? We have freezers.
posted by Science! at 3:17 PM on February 20

I love Frontline. It has gravitas without being bleak and depressing. I think it's largely due to the narrator. I could listen to his voice for hours.
posted by wastelands at 3:23 PM on February 20

Freezers? We don't need no stinkin' freezers!
posted by davejay at 3:24 PM on February 20

I'm confused. At the bottom of the transcript, it tells me that I should "watch onlin", but I can't figure out who Onlin is.

no it doesn't. Because I just fixed it.
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:27 PM on February 20

Freezers? We don't need no stinkin' freezers!

Fuck yeah! We'll eat each other raw and rotting!
posted by Caduceus at 3:28 PM on February 20

no it doesn't. Because I just fixed it.

You shouldn't just give out e's like that.
posted by gman at 3:30 PM on February 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm a huuuuge Frontline fan, but this one disappointed me. I felt like it was a mostly superficial look at what happened and didn't explain much.

I could not agree more. Love Frontline. Was eagerly expecting something good here, but was bored. Did not learn anything new. That said, I read a bunch of finance blogs and Planet Money religiously so maybe my expectations were too high.

Paul Kedrosky had some spot-on criticisms of this Frontline episode:

My biggest complaint? Two-parter:

1. Not enough bankers talking, too many journalists, and too few bloggers. On the last point, not me personally necessarily, but a host of bloggers provided the best coverage of the credit crisis, and not one of them (!!) made it into the Frontline segment. That was wrong.

2. Not enough discussion of why banks matter and why they're different than auto companies, and why that needs to change. We keep throwing around words like "systemic crises" without being clear about what we mean.

posted by gen at 3:30 PM on February 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

I felt like it was a mostly superficial look at what happened and didn't explain much.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. I thought it was interesting, but maybe constrained by the 1-hour time frame.
posted by gimonca at 3:34 PM on February 20

You're all going to be fuckin' homeless and malnourished soon.


"I'm not fat. I'm drought and famine resistant!"
posted by The Whelk at 3:36 PM on February 20

Another account of those fateful first days, albeit from a less-credible source.
posted by Law Talkin' Guy at 3:53 PM on February 20

Not a bad episode. Maybe not as good as the TAL podcast, but it told a different, and more mythical, story. It's a bit of a tragedy - the tale of one man--Paulson--who is forced by circumstance to give up on his fundamental right wing freemarket principles.

It would have been really good if they'd gotten access to Paulson himself.
posted by dydecker at 3:59 PM on February 20

you have to subscribe to that WSJ link, Law Talker
posted by captainsohler at 4:02 PM on February 20

you have to subscribe to that WSJ link, Law Talker

No, the article's just not finished yet.
posted by gman at 4:04 PM on February 20 [2 favorites has favorites]

In watching the movie, it seemed like they brought together the information from a few key articles. I was basically watching while reading along with this Vanity Fair piece. THe parts about Kyle Bass reminded me a bit about this Michael Lewis article (except the CDS investor in the Lewis piece is named David Einhorn).

Seriously, though, after having spent a bit of time learning about this crisis it seems as though designer Jonathan Jarvis has explained the nuts and bolts of the situation the best.
posted by Hypnotic Chick at 4:06 PM on February 20 [3 favorites has favorites]

you have to subscribe to that WSJ link, Law Talker

No you don't, captainsohler. At the bottom left of the article summary, do you see the little icon labelled 'Email'? Click it and mail your self a link. When it arrives in your mailbox, open it to see the whole article.

I don't know why WSJ makes it annoying but trivial to access all their content, but that's the way it works.
posted by csw at 4:21 PM on February 20

You shouldn't just give out e's like that.

Why not? They're safer than peanuts.
posted by homunculus at 4:28 PM on February 20

It's not easy being e.
posted by davejay at 4:42 PM on February 20

you have to subscribe to that WSJ link, Law Talker

No, the article's just not finished yet.


WSJ is accepting PayPal donations to finance the story's completion.
posted by terranova at 5:08 PM on February 20

I saw the page title in firefox's title bar and thought "The beginning of the end of metafilter? That was years ago...and a probably at least a double".
posted by srboisvert at 5:40 PM on February 20

What we need is for Obama to stop talking like Jimmy Carter (we will all have to do with less) and more like Ronald Reagan (we will prosper). Attitude matters. If you think you will be depressed, trust me, you will be. It works exactly the same way with the economy, and it is Obama's big failing so far. He seems to be protecting his image in case there is no turnaround. That is nice for him, bad for us. Ronald Reagan basically turned around the doldrums of the late 70's., early 80's economy with his quite vibrant optimism. It might have seemed a bit naive, just as it might have seemed when FDR did essentially the same thing, but it worked. One of our biggest problems right now is a crisis of confidence. The president is in position to build that confidence, but not if he keeps hedging his bets and talking about how dire things are. Obama needs to get out his megaphone and start cheering. Many of the cynics here on mefi will find this quaint, but they are ignorant. It is a house of cards, and perception is the key building block.
posted by caddis at 8:36 PM on February 20

It is a house of cards, and perception is the key building block.

Ooh! Are we playing Thomas Friedman again? I say the economy is an out of control lawnmower, and optimism is the grease on the bicycle chain of... lawn... furniture?
posted by fleetmouse at 8:51 PM on February 20 [8 favorites has favorites]

What we need is for Obama to stop talking like Jimmy Carter (we will all have to do with less) and more like Ronald Reagan (we will prosper). Attitude matters. If you think you will be depressed, trust me, you will be. It works exactly the same way with the economy,

Ah the Phil Gram approach, we're all just a nation of whiners, and we're suffering from a mental recession.

Look, the economy has serious problems that wishfull thinking won't fix. We had 8 years of a president who thought statements induced reality, and it didn't work out very well at all. Obama needs to be straightforward, and at this point people are so worried that if Obama starts saying everything's wonderful people will just think he's lying.

Honesty is the best policy, and in fact markets operate more efficiently when people don't hide things. The honest truth is that the value of these assets is really, really low.
posted by delmoi at 9:41 PM on February 20

Obama can't make that switch yet, and it's because of the differences in the way this crisis is playing out in comparison to the Great Depression.

FDR became president in 1933, three and a half years into the crisis, with people absolutely disgusted with Hoover. He had a strong mandate to get the New Deal through, and didn't have to spend any time trying to convince the people that the situation was dire enough to require something as radical as the New Deal was at the time. People already knew the situation was that dire, because they'd been living it for three years.

Obama comes in only a few months into this crisis. Yes, people are sick of Bush, but we're not at the bottom yet. Obama still has to spend some political capital on explaining the gravity of the situation because passage of his policies is not assured. And because we're quite likely not at the bottom of the crisis yet, if Obama makes any move toward "happy days are here again," his support will erode more quickly. He'll be able to be painted as out of touch, yes, but politically he'll also end up taking the blame for the part of the fall that's yet to come and will thus be unable to push any policies that are needed when we do hit the bottom.

On the other hand, there's no political cost to praising the ability of the American people to respond to a crisis. Look for the State of the Union to be simultaneously sobering and filled with references to a can-do attitude.
posted by Chanther at 11:09 PM on February 20

"Ooh! Are we playing Thomas Friedman again? I say the economy is an out of control lawnmower, and optimism is the grease on the bicycle chain of... lawn... furniture?"

No, the economy is the lawn sprinkler, and the grass is the Indonesian call center worker, and the dirt is the dollar index, and the sun is Alan Greenspan.
posted by krinklyfig at 11:25 PM on February 20 [1 favorite has favorites]

My synopsis:

1) We're fucked
2) The people responsible will never be punished
3) Also, we're fucked

You can send my Emmy via FedEx, thanks.
posted by tommasz at 7:54 AM on February 21 [2 favorites has favorites]

By the way, I found this on the Neatorama blog from the "Cuteness in Advertising" FPP:

The Credit Crisis Visualized, Part 1
The Credit Crisis Visualized, Part 2

Surprisingly lucid.
posted by LMGM at 8:04 AM on February 21

Seemed like they were desperate for a theme, something, anything to tie it all together and settled for The Conversion of Hank Paulson.

Lame.
posted by IndigoJones at 9:16 AM on February 21

Really. This show was a serious dud. Inside the tortured soul of Hank Paulson? Please. I kept thinking they were actually going to, y'know, explain something. Instead we got faux-insider-porn.

The only thing worse I've seen recently was Katie Couric's attempt to "explain" the possible "nationalization" of the banks. Truly imbecilic and, fortunately, utterly incoherent. TV news should stick to plucky survivors and the dangers of text-messaging.
posted by words1 at 10:13 AM on February 21

Related: After receiving $45 billion in federal money, Bank of America CEO (who is being subpoenaed by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo) now says--in response to talk of nationalization--that BoA can make it on their own.
posted by ornate insect at 11:21 AM on February 21

What we need is for Obama to stop talking like Jimmy Carter (we will all have to do with less) and more like Ronald Reagan (we will prosper). Attitude matters.

This isn't a crisis of consumer confidence that Obama must cure. Primarily, it's a crisis of confidence of the system itself. Consumers aren't part of the TED spread. It's the banks themselves, and no amount of channelling FDR's inspiration or Greenspan's nebuluous doublespeak will cure them. Many are dead on paper and know it. Unlike consumers, banks have deep access and familiarity with the balance sheets. At least, their own balance sheets. At this moment, interbank lending is crippled by a lack of confidence in the opaque balance sheets of other banks. You know your balance sheet is bad, so you assume everyone else is smart enough to hide the bodies too, right? It's gotten better primarily as a result of the promise of TARP, but the TED spread is still abnormally high.

If it was a consumer confidence issue, there'd be bank runs. FDIC has largely negated that threat, in favor of zombie banks that aren't making loans and are worthless according to decent accounting principles.
posted by pwnguin at 11:22 AM on February 21

it's a crisis of confidence of the system itself

I would go further and say that beyond confidence or credit, it's a liquidity crisis.

The evidence suggests that the nation's banking system is effectively insolvent. The system, as Soros suggests, has been on life support for at least six months. The extent of the damage is such that the so-called zombie banks are, well, all the banks. It's good money chasing after bad, and unless the banks are nationalized soon it will almost certainly get worse.
posted by ornate insect at 11:37 AM on February 21

Ah the Phil Gram approach, we're all just a nation of whiners, and we're suffering from a mental recession.

Speaking of Gramm: Phil ‘mental recession’ Gramm attempts to resuscitate his reputation.
posted by homunculus at 12:50 PM on February 21

Phil ‘mental recession’ Gramm attempts to resuscitate his reputation.

He's convincing UBS to turn over its records of wealthy US tax cheats?
posted by ryoshu at 1:10 PM on February 21

This isn't a crisis of consumer confidence that Obama must cure. Primarily, it's a crisis of confidence of the system itself. Consumers aren't part of the TED spread. It's the banks themselves, and no amount of channelling FDR's inspiration or Greenspan's nebuluous doublespeak will cure them.

I disagree. You assume that markets and banks are perfectly rational acters seeking the most rational outcome. It doesn't work that way. The herd mentality infects institutions as much as it infects the public. As for confidence, there is also a lack of confidence in government's ability to solve this problem. That is a problem of confidence he could address. Words of confidence need to be accompanied with deeds of confidence, but the words matter.
posted by caddis at 5:38 AM on February 22

1. Not enough bankers talking, too many journalists, and too few bloggers. On the last point, not me personally necessarily, but a host of bloggers provided the best coverage of the credit crisis, and not one of them (!!) made it into the Frontline segment. That was wrong.

Adam Davidson was on there. Granted he works for NPR but he does write Planet Money.

The only thing worse I've seen recently was Katie Couric's attempt to "explain" the possible "nationalization" of the banks.

I'd love to see that. Is there a YouTube?

I would go further and say that beyond confidence or credit, it's a liquidity crisis.

No. No. No. Maybe it was a Liquidity crisis last summer/fall. It is NOT a liquidity crisis anymore.
posted by jckll at 6:47 AM on February 25