I’m falling behind on my e-mail replies, because I am once again indulging my fascination with the 2008 meltdown of the financial markets and the Great Recession that resulted from it. Following 9/11, it was the second worldwide crisis of the Internet Age, and it was the first to happen since I began this blog, with the pandemic being of course the second. I’ll probably do more prattling after watching this video.
P.S. I wouldn’t say there’s an untold story in the documentary, but there are couple of tidbits in there I didn’t know. First, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was enduring so much unrelenting stress that he had a probable panic attack after Congress failed to approve a bailout.
After the TARP bailout was approved on a second vote, it was Warren Buffett who suggested to Paulson that the money be given directly to the investment banks, rather than being used to buy their toxic assets. That very unpopular action helped to get the Tea Party started, of course. What makes no sense to me at all was how the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street ended up on opposite sides of the political street.
