Another fascinating "Frontline" show... The Warning

that hindsight is 20-20. Not to make light of this but I'm sure that a wide range of predictions occurred as are occurring now. Some will come to pass and some won't. You can start writing your stories now and pull out the one that fits later.

I often watch "Front-line". Definitely a series that offers a heavy helping of food for

I have only read the firs page, so cannot comment on the content. My only impression from that was when a lot of money is being made (with remarkably little effort) , there is no rush to kill the cash cow. So the result is to react rather than be proactive.

Angeline

Meltdown How Greed and Corruption Shattered Our Financial System and How We Can Recover by Katrina Vanden Heuvel and the editors of the Nation.

It talks about Peter Goodman of the New York Times produced a devastating account of how the Federal Reserve and the Clinton administration collaborated to block efforts to regulate the credit derivatives that became a critical factor in inducing the present crisis.

Goodman patiently reconstructed how the CFTC efforts to impose regulatory oversight on derivatives were stymied by Fed chair Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and SEC chair Arthur Levitt in 1997. Greenspan, Rubin and Levitt very publicly kneecapped commission chair Brooksley Born and effectively drove her from government. They staged a brutal dressing-down and urged Congress to prevent her from acting. Congress complied with a low blocking CFTC action. Lawrence Summers, Rubin's deputy at Treasury and later secretary himself, personally rebuked Born and accused her of theatening a financial crisis.

Later it says Greenspan, under grilling from Rep. Waxman, offered a weasel-worded admission that he had been mistaken about derivatives. Otherwise, none of these guys have acknoledged error, much less apologized to the American people.

I haven't gotten very far in the book because I can only read a few pages at a time without wanting to shoot someone. I just haven't figured out who yet.

Diana

I didn't see the show, but in many ways tend to trust Frontline of the topic at hand.

For those in the know, they get a feeling of how things are going. While they may never know the true outcome, there are bound to be some markers/signs that suggest what is coming is coming. It may not be so obvious, however those with experience, knoweledge and ACCESS can see prior end of play as all the pieces falls into place. Sure, there' some though, but that's what they're there for to provide some insight on what they know best.

Now that time has passed it seems some of it was more than mere coincidence and the players can be outright shown to be what they have become by their actions. The recent housing bubble was at least 3yrs. if not longer shown to be coming to an end, time to make corrections, NOPE. That Enron, seems to making money as if by magic. Yeah, playing with the numbers, that inaction on Afghanistan when Taliban was kicked out created a vacuum, no immediate US interplay, they're back. All this was a result, that many felt if not acted upn could come to haunt us. Thiose in the know made the alarm bells go off, but heed was not taken. So, you have to ask yourself, why? basically, I'm sure that's what the show may have tried to show, of course you can correct me if wrong. -----Willy