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UID:Indybay-18668076
SEQUENCE:18744343
CREATED:20110102T071600Z
DESCRIPTION:\nFilm evenings begin with optional potluck refreshments and social hour at 
  6:30 pm,\nfollowed by the film at  7:30 pm, followed by a discussion after 
 the film.\n\nDouble Feature\nTwo Frontline films\n\nThe Warning\nby Michael 
 Kirk\n\nThis Frontline documentary portrays the hidden history of the 
 nation’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.  At the 
 center of it all is Brooksley Born, who tells about her failed campaign to 
 regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash 
 helped trigger the financial collapse of 2008.  “It’ll happen again if 
 we don’t take the appropriate steps,” Born warns.  “We didn’t truly 
 know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market ….  They 
 were totally opposed to regulation ….  That puzzled me.  What was it that 
 was in this market that had to be hidden?”  Born’s battle behind closed 
 doors was epic.  The members of the President’s Working Group, Alan 
 Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers, vehemently opposed regulation 
 — especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.  They 
 ultimately prevailed on Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation 
 of derivatives.  Born faced a formidable struggle pushing for regulation 
 when the stock market was booming.  Alan Greenspan was king, and both 
 parties in Washington were united in a belief that the markets would take 
 care of themselves.  Today, many of the same men who shut down Born are in 
 key positions in the Obama administration.  This film reveals the 
 complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about 
 current attempts to prevent the next one.\n\nInside the Meltdown\nby 
 Michael Kirk\n\nThis Frontline documentary portrays what it was like inside 
 the financial meltdown of 2008.  As the housing bubble burst and trillions 
 of dollars’ worth of toxic mortgages began to go bad in 2007, fear spread 
 through the massive firms that form the heart of Wall Street.  By the 
 spring of 2008, burdened by billions of dollars of bad mortgages, the 
 investment bank Bear Stearns was the subject of rumors that it would soon 
 fail.  To stabilize the markets, Ben Bernanke engineered a shotgun marriage 
 between Bear Sterns and the commercial bank JPMorgan, with a promise that 
 the federal government would use $30 billion to cover Bear Stearns’ 
 questionable assets tied to toxic mortgages.  It was an unprecedented 
 effort to stop the contagion of fear that seemed to be threatening the rest 
 of Wall Street.  Within months, however, Hank Paulson, a conservative and 
 Republican, would witness the virtual collapse of the giant mortgage 
 companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and preside over their takeover by the 
 federal government.  This calamity sent shockwaves through the economy as 
 confidence in Wall Street began to evaporate.  Within days, in September 
 2008, another investment bank, Lehman Brothers, was on the brink of 
 collapse.  Once again, there were calls for Bernanke and Paulson to bail 
 out the Wall Street giant.  But Paulson was under intense political 
 pressure from conservative Republicans to invoke moral hazard and let the 
 company fail.  Paulson pushed Lehman’s CEO to find a buyer for his ailing 
 company.  But no company would buy Lehman unless the government offered a 
 deal similar to the one Bear Stearns had received.  Paulson refused, and 
 Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy.\n\nA financial disaster of epic 
 proportions followed.  Within 24 hours, the stock market crashed, and 
 credit markets around the world froze.  “We’re no longer talking about 
 mortgages,” said economist Mark Gertler.  “We’re talking about car 
 loans, loans to small businesses, commercial paper borrowing by large 
 banks.  This is like a disease spreading.”  Paulson was thunderstruck.  
 In response, he and Bernanke would propose — and Congress would 
 eventually pass — a $700 billion bailout plan.  “Many Americans still 
 don’t understand what has happened to the economy,” Frontline’s 
 Michael Kirk says. “How did it all go so bad so quickly?  Who is 
 responsible?  How effective has the response from Washington and Wall 
 Street been?  Those are the questions at the heart of this film 
 .”\n\nWheelchair accessible around the corner at  411  28th  Street\n\n$5 
 donations are accepted\n\n\n\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/01/01/18668076.php
SUMMARY:The Warning plus Inside the Meltdown
LOCATION:Humanist Hall\n390  27th  Street\nuptown Oakland, between Telegraph and 
 Broadway\nhttp://www.HumanistHall.org\n
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/01/01/18668076.php
DTSTART:20110127T033000Z
DTEND:20110127T060000Z
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