The US Economic Scene: Money, Power, and Wall Street - a revealing PBS Frontline Special

A PBS Frontline TV program investigates the inside story and exposes the unprecedented and uneasy partnership between government leaders and titans of finance. The program also explores some of the key decisions, missed opportunities and struggles to rescue and repair a shattered economy.

Decades of deregulation kept the government’s top officials in the dark about the complicated financial products that drove the meltdown. As Wall Street innovated, its revenues skyrocketed, and financial institutions of all stripes tied their fortunes to one another. 

Said Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank CEO: “We were bullish on the mortgage market in general, and {bundling and selling} subprime {mortgage risk} was an element of it.”

Beginning with the government bailout of the collapsing investment bank Bear Stearns in the spring of 2008, the film tells the story of how the country’s leaders - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner - struggled to respond to a financial crisis that caught them by surprise.

For more: OHIO FRAUDclosure: Money, Power, and Wall Street - PBS Frontline Special