Wall Street's Collapse, 3 Years Later
By Danny Schechter
ConsortiumNews
August 3, 2010
Editor’s Note: Three years ago, Wall Street’s financial collapse began with the first major cracks in a foundation built on the sand of securitized sub-prime mortgages, complex credit default swaps, and the avarice of investment banks and hedge funds.
Soon, some of Wall Street’s most “esteemed” institutions – like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers – were toppling; a blight of foreclosures was spreading across the country; eight million Americans were losing their jobs; and well-heeled bankers in their corporate jets were winging down to Washington demanding a bailout – a man-made disaster that Danny Schechter reviews in this guest essay:
We live in the United States of Amnesia and selective memory. As we debate the breaking news, we easily forget the sequence of events that broke the banks and left us broke.
Three years ago, when the idea of an Obama presidency was sill a fantasy in polite company, a non-seismic financial earthquake began to rumble in ways we then could barely anticipate.
(Continued....)
ConsortiumNews
August 3, 2010
Editor’s Note: Three years ago, Wall Street’s financial collapse began with the first major cracks in a foundation built on the sand of securitized sub-prime mortgages, complex credit default swaps, and the avarice of investment banks and hedge funds.
Soon, some of Wall Street’s most “esteemed” institutions – like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers – were toppling; a blight of foreclosures was spreading across the country; eight million Americans were losing their jobs; and well-heeled bankers in their corporate jets were winging down to Washington demanding a bailout – a man-made disaster that Danny Schechter reviews in this guest essay:
We live in the United States of Amnesia and selective memory. As we debate the breaking news, we easily forget the sequence of events that broke the banks and left us broke.
Three years ago, when the idea of an Obama presidency was sill a fantasy in polite company, a non-seismic financial earthquake began to rumble in ways we then could barely anticipate.
(Continued....)
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1 Comments:
The article makes many good points. Unfortunately, it failed to go far enough and remind folks about the problems created by government intervention including; Glass-Steagall (Clinton), various affordable housing programs and pressure to make loans to those who cold not repay (Frank, Dodd and "Do-Gooders" on both sides of the aisle).
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