'60 Minutes' Silent on Government Role in Financial Crisis

Newsbusters ^ | 03/15/10 | Anthony Kang

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"He dug into the idiocy and negligence that produced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," Steve Kroft opened a segment of the March 14 CBS "60 Minutes," featuring author Michael Lewis' latest work - "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine."

If Lewis "dug into the idiocy and negligence," he did so selectively - or that's what viewers could conclude from the long "60 Minutes" report, which concerned itself with how "some of Wall Street's smartest minds managed to destroy $1.75 trillion of wealth in the sub-prime mortgage markets." Somehow, in a 24-minute report about the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, nobody ever said where all the bad loans originated.

Lewis told Kroft that the financial crisis was "a story of mass delusion."

"How can they not look at the numbers?" Kroft asked. "How can Wall Street be selling all these, buying all of these mortgages and repackaging them and not realizing they are not very good mortgages?"

[Alistair Stratford IV]

What is this “60 minutes” show that you speak of?

[ETL]

“Shocking Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

[OldDeckHand]

What do you expect when 60 Minutes interviews Mike Lewis - a guy who lives in Berkley, CA and is married to a former MTV veejay?

Without government intervention in the marketplace, there never would have been sub-prime loans (at least not in these kinds of volumes), that were repackaged, overrated and sold to brokerage houses and insured (idiotically) by AIG.

That's the WHOLE story, of course Lewis leaves the first part completely out of his narrative.

[wac3rd]

Like the Liberal predecessors, Stalin and Mao, you just erase the parts of history you don’t like.

Onward to the Commie Utopia!

[ETL]

you just erase the parts of history you don’t like.

They like it alright. They did it deliberately. Of course they can never admit to it, so they BS their way around he issue.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I saw this interview (or packaged government bow-wow) last night and laughed at the ending. Not a single word about how the Democrat Party blackmailed banks and S&Ls into sub-prime lending in the first place.

Not a single word about the “Community Reinvestment Act.”

Just when I think CBS might have returned to its roots as a top flight news gathering organization, Steve Wattles lets fly with this half baked screed.

[Cyman]

60 Minutes. The most dishonest, morally and ethically corrupt show on television.

[Sleeping Freeper]

60 Minutes. The most dishonest, morally and ethically corrupt show on television.

... Agreed, with one exception.... when Obama gives a speech.

[beethovenfan]

And the fat little c-s Fwank was right in the middle of it.

[seton89]

NY AG Andrew Cuomo when he was HUD Sec did his part to damage the free market-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314

now Prince Andrew wants to be NY gov

[<1/1,000,000th%]

He also leaves out the part about the Dems suddenly discovering this crisis when the polls favored McCain over Obama.

Barney Frank was claiming Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were solvent as late as July 2008.

[LomanBill]

Interesting what they left out -

 

Tidbits like the little RINO Dutch Boy and his Ambassador, Roland Arnall... were completely missing.

 

 

Whether we like PBS or not - FRONTLINE has done a better job of digging into the facts

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/go/financial-crisis/

 

 

Especially interesting was Frontline's The Warning  - Which deals extensively with this obscure quote:

"...fraud, you probably think there should be rules against it, I think the market will figure it out."

--Alan "The Wizard" Greenspan

 

And sheds a little light upon the regulatory context (or lack thereof) in which the systematic gaming of the financial infrastructure took place.

[LomanBill]

[He also leaves out the part about the Dems suddenly discovering this crisis when the polls favored McCain over Obama]

 

If McWeevil hadn't been such a feeble woosie - he'd have been all over Obama National Financial Chairwoman Penny Pritzker's role in sub-prime lending; ala her family bank that FAILED from doing subprime back in 2001.

 

 

"Penny Pritzker, a Chicago-based scion of the Hyatt Hotel fortune worth more than $2 billion, has helped Obama raise $188 million. That’s reported to be the largest ever for a primary race.

A weekend Wall Street Journal article is an informative piece, but reveals itself to be a “puff piece” by the way it buries the real news. Toward the end of the article is this mention about Pritzker:

Her business career hit a bump in 2001, with the costly failure of Superior Bank FSB, a Chicago-area thrift that was seized by federal regulators after it ran into problems with subprime lending. The Pritzker family held a 50% stake, and Ms. Pritzker had been on the board of the bank’s holding company. Anxious to avoid further embarrassment and liability, the Pritzkers and their co-owner settled with federal officials by agreeing to pay $460 million over 15 years...."

Hardly a well-kept secret..

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=penny+pritzker+Sub-Prime&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&fp=18ec2db39eb50b9d

 

 

 

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Yes!

[LomanBill]

>>Not a single word about the “Community Reinvestment Act.”

Yep, and unless I blinked and missed it, nothing about...

...ACORN, either.

 

People knew what was going on - problem was, most of them didn't care... because:

 

"According to my opinion, and the opinions of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare. What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.

 

It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages.

 

The first stage being "demoralization"...."

---KGB Defector Yuri Bezmenov

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2095202/posts

 

Rules?  What Rules?

 

 

[alrea]

Without government intervention in the marketplace, there never would have been sub-prime loans (at least not in these kinds of volumes), that were repackaged, overrated and sold to brokerage houses and insured

100 % true

[Eric in the Ozarks]

In hillbilly language, “If someone is handing out $100 bills, get in line.”