An education and warning

I hope you--and lots of people, nationwide--watched the "Frontline" special on PBS last evening named "The Warning."

It was about how our unregulated markets were allowed to be created, first, but then, further, how they were allowed to propagate, complete with rules that allowed out-and-out fraud and manipulation of the markets, with the thought that completely, utterly free markets were important and good and that they could and would regulate themselves.

They did and, because of the lack of regulation, they also collapsed.

Last evening's one-hour report told of one woman's attempt to regulate the quantity of trades--so we know how much or our economy was tied up in it--as well as regulating, again, possible manipulation and fraud.

So now, here we are in 2009 after two collapses in our markets and where are we?

After seeing it, I had to ask: How could you not come to the conclusion that we are in very much the same place, without having learned any lessons?

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and all these people are still in power, the bonuses are still being paid out, there were no penalties, we still allow fraud and manipulation in commodity futures, we still don't regulate the trillions of dollars in hedge funds, etc.

It's hard to be optimistic about either what happened in the 1990's and its collapse, the recent collapse, now, in the 2000's and into the future.

If you didn't see "The Warning", you need to.

Links: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/25/AR2009052502108.html
http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/10/20/brooksley-born-on-frontline-tuesday/