Before the Great Recession, “The Warning” | Full Documentary

Jan 27, 2026 | Long before the economic meltdown in the U.S. that led to the Great Recession, one woman tried to raise the alarm about the threat to the financial system.

“The Warning” unearthed the hidden history of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression in the United States. Brooksley Born spoke for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.

“We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” said Born, who was the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC]. Born not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country’s key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis.

The documentary also revealed an intense battle among high-ranking members of former President Bill Clinton’s administration and uncovered a concerted effort not to regulate the emerging, highly complex, and lucrative derivatives markets, which became a ticking time-bomb within the American economy.



It is rather shocking to me that a man as clever as Alan Greenspan was considered to be was such a devotee of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand was an émigrée from the Soviet Union. She had very extreme, laissez-faire ideas which were verging on the anarchic. That Alan Greenspan, known as ‘The Wizard’ because of his superior understanding of economics, couldn’t see through Ayn Rand’s cranky theories is enigmatic, to say the least. — © Mark Alexander

Frontline: The Warning! | Documentary

Alan Greenspan: I Didn’t Vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump – BBC Newsnight

Evan Davis spoke to the former president of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. What's his reaction to the result of US presidential election - and Donald Trump's victory?

Alan Greenspan on Brexit, US Economy, and Inflation | Full Interview

June 27 -- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan discusses fallout the U.K.'s Brexit referendum, U.S. economic growth, wage and economic stagnation, central banks, low productivity, and his call for inflation in the U.S. economy. He speaks with Bloomberg's Michael McKee and Tom Keene on "Bloomberg ‹GO›."

Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds
The commission’s report finds fault with two Fed chairmen: Alan Greenspan, right, a skeptic of regulation who led the central bank as the housing bubble expanded, and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, who did not foresee the crisis but then played a crucial role in the response to it. Photograph: The New York Times
THE NEW YORK TIMES: WASHINGTON — The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry.

The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans.

“The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done,” the panel wrote in the report’s conclusions, which were read by The New York Times. “If we accept this notion, it will happen again.”

While the panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, accuses several financial institutions of greed, ineptitude or both, some of its gravest conclusions concern government failings, with embarrassing implications for both parties. But the panel was itself divided along partisan lines, which could blunt the impact of its findings.

Many of the conclusions have been widely described, but the synthesis of interviews, documents and testimony, along with its government imprimatur, give the report — to be released on Thursday as a 576-page book — a conclusive sweep and authority. >>> Sewell Chan | Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Liberal Economist Who's Become Obama's Chief Critic
THE INDEPENDENT: Forget the Republicans, the biggest thorn in the President's side is Paul Krugman. Stephen Foley reports

Paul Krugman On the bank bailout: 'The plans are a classic exercise in 'lemon socialism': taxpayers bear the cost if things go wrong, stockholders and executives get the benefits if things go right. Photo courtesy of The Independent
His apocalyptic warnings have sent readers flocking to his blog. A viral video of a Californian man literally singing his praises is a hit on YouTube. Tickets to a lecture he was giving in California last night were going for $135 (£91). Newsweek magazine just put him on the cover and dubbed him the head of "the loyal opposition". Paul Krugman is the man of the moment. And Team Obama is rattled.

While the US leader has been entrancing foreign statesmen on a whirlwind tour of Europe and trying to craft an era of bipartisanship back home, his staunchest opponent has appeared from very close quarters – from the left – threatening a crisis of confidence that could capsize his infant presidency.

The Obama administration has been blindsided by the emergence of Mr Krugman – not even a politician, but an economist – as a focus for dissidents who believe it is not doing enough to repair the economy.

On both pillars of Mr Obama's economic strategy – the $800bn package to stimulate the economy and the $1 trillion bailout for the financial sector – the bearded Princeton university professor has been the President's most coruscating critic.

Mr Krugman has been doing his New York Times column for a decade. He has long been a staple on political talk shows and gained new respect last year when he won the Nobel prize for economics for his work on international trade. But in the past few months, he has tapped into the anxiety of a wider audience, which is asking the question of the moment: will the Obama recovery plan work?

His answer is no. The economic stimulus Bill was far smaller than required to combat soaring job losses, which yesterday passed five million since the start of the US recession. Worse, the plan to repair the banking system – lending private investors up to $1 trillion to buy toxic mortgage assets from the country's ailing banks, in the hope of freeing them up to start lending again – is doomed, because it is based on the flawed notion that the major US banks are fundamentally sound. >>> Stephen Foley | Saturday, April 4, 2009

YOUTUBE: The Shortcomings of the Stimulus Plan

Alan Greenspan: Capitalism & the Economic Crisis

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Hardcover (US) Barnes & Noble >>>

Nobelpreisträger: “Greenspan und Bush schuld an Finanzkrise”
DIE PRESSE: "Greenspan hat mit niedrigen Zinsen die Flut an Krediten ausgelöst", kritisiert US-Ökonom Joseph Stiglitz. Auch die Regierung Bush habe die falsche Politik betrieben, so Stiglitz.

Der US-Ökonom und Nobelpreisträger Joseph Stiglitz sieht einen großen Teil der Schuld für die US-Finanzkrise beim früheren Chef der US-Notenbank, Alan Greenspan zu. "Dieser Mann hat leider viele Fehler gemacht. Der erste war seine Unterstützung für all die Steuersenkungen, die unter Bush erfolgten. Diese haben die Wirtschaft nicht sehr stimuliert. Diese Aufgabe wurde darauf mehr der Geldpolitik übertragen. Doch dann hat er mit niedrigen Zinsen die Flut an Krediten ausgelöst", meinte er in einem Interview mit dem am Montag erscheinenden Nachrichtenmagazin "profil". 



Aber auch die Regierung von US-Präsident George W. Bush habe eine falsche Politik betrieben. "Ich werfe ihr vor, dass sie mit den laufenden Steuersenkungen und den enormen Ausgaben für den Irak-Krieg dafür gesorgt haben, dass die Wirtschaft nicht so widerstandsfähig war, wie sie es hätte sein sollen." Nobelpreisträger: "Greenspan und Bush schuld an Finanzkrise" >>> | 27.04.2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Taschenbuch)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Gebundene Ausgabe)