I have been watching a bunch of PBS documentaries about the financial crises,

[johnd83]

and I have been shocked about how the financial regulators were doing their jobs. I guess I haven't been paying that close attention, but apparently people like Alan Greenspan thought that regulation was unnecessary because the market would punish companies that committed fraud, and that the market would self stabilize. There seem to be two major concepts that struck me as insane:

1. People always made the best rational decision economically and almost always made the "right" decision. This assumes that the person has all the information about options and can calculate the "optimal" outcome.

2. Emotions did not factor in to economic decisions and people made totally detached, rational decisions.

Both of these concepts were completely, utterly, tragically wrong. And there is tape of Alan Greenspan in front of congress saying he was wrong.

Now, in the 2012 election, we have the GOP campaigning on the EXACT SAME IDEAS which were completely, unequivocally determined to be wrong.

What the heck is going on, and why aren't more people freaking out about this?

Here are some of the videos if people are interested. They are worth a watch if you haven't seen them already.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/breakingthebank/view/

I guess this one is a full movie; it is on Netflix

[Hissyspit]

1. Don't forget "Inside Job."

I had to turn it off at times and watch it in increments when I watched it recently because I kept getting pissed.

Also, Michael Moore's "Captialism: A Love Story."

[elleng]

2. That's 'Economics,'

the way its been taught. There are NEW economic thinkers trying to change the program. Hope they succeed (in time to avert TOTAL disaster.)

[GliderGuider]

12. They won't - "The Program" is a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.

Also, it's too late in the game. The myriad of wicked problems in the political, economic, resource, environmental and ecological domains have coalesced while we weren't watching. While today may look much like yesterday for the moment, the avalanche is already underway.

There's no time left for the Herman Dalys of the world to change the outcome, even if the Masters of the Universe would open the door for them.

[msongs]

3. as there is no effective political opposition to these strategies, they continue unchecked nt

[snot]

4. Most of the public radio stuff I've heard has still fallen short of the reality.

We have been, and are still being, systematically looted; and anyone who thinks the looters-in-chief don't realize exactly what they're doing is a fool or at best remains under-informed.

[Fuddnik]

5. They had a four-part series called "The History of Money", by Niall Ferguson

The first 3 parts were pretty good, until part four where he descended into a giant blow-job of praise for the greatness, and vision of Milton Friedman, the "Miracle of Chile", supply side economics, and it went downhill from there.

[Warpy]

6. Iceland had the right idea

They nationalized the banks and went after the fraudsters and put them into prison.

They are now well into a strong recovery while the rest of the world is trying to keep putting bandaids on a bad system.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. "people" are freaking out about this

but the people whose job is to enforce laws are NOT freaking out, they are aiding and abetting the mass theft.

Many of us over the past decade have come to understand that Congress is a wholly owned subsidiary of the baking cartels. Enough banker friendly people are in power in DC to make sure the rules and regulations are NOT enforced.
That is a given.
Period.

[jtuck004]

8. "why aren't more people freaking out"

Curious - what made you freak out?

I ask, because this stuff has been around for years, the first book I bought on it was several years ago, so what made you sit up and take notice now? Because that might be a clue as to what others are missing...

was it the way it was presented, the info, ?

[johnd83]

9. I had always blamed the crash on incompetence by the regulators

I didn't realize that the lack of regulation on such a scale was a conscious choice. I honestly hadn't really paid that close attention until I saw the documentaries.

[just1voice]

13. You answered the question, you didn't pay attention to it

Many people don't pay attention simply because real news bores them, they prefer the pretty propaganda pictures they see on TV. I'm not saying you did, just that many people do.

If people were taught was propaganda is, they'd be amazed at how much of what they read and view is actually all-out propaganda. Here's an example and the definition of propaganda, just replace "propaganda" with "mainstream media news":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

--Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes.

As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare.--

[jwirr]

10. Coming from a poor family I never fell for the trickle down theory so when this crash started it was

in the back of my mind that it was related to that idea. Then I started reading books such as Disaster Capital by Naomi Klein and When Corporations Rule by Corten. That connected the dots for me.

[mother earth]

11. Rise & shine, sleepyhead, & welcome to DU. nt