If you want to understand the recent economic meltdown, you should see "The Warning" on Frontline. Watch it online here. It's about Brooksley Born, chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission under President Clinton and how she tried to regulate derivatives, the chief cause of the crash and the recession. She was fought every step of the way by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Clinton's economic advisor Larry Summers, the same Larry Summers who's advising President Obama now.
Now bank lobbyists are doing everything in their considerable power to prevent any regulation of derivatives even after the crash because there's just too much money in it for them, and they don't care if the economy crashes and burns again.
Here's a snippet:
