The Caterpillar kidnapping incident made news around the world. ibid.
The big three US auto companies came to Washington to ask for a massive government bailout. Famously, they arrived in private corporate jets … Canada quickly followed suit. ibid.
After the fall: the Sheikh who pretends the crash never happened. The Wall Street king charged with fraud. The Congresswoman who wants to jail the bankers. And the world leaders who want a rethink about capitalism. Meltdown: The Secret History of the Financial Global Collapse IV: After the Fall
The search for the causes of the financial meltdown has led to some evidence of fraud and corruption. ibid.
Goldman Sachs eventually settled its fraud case by paying an unprecedented $550 billion fine. ibid.
In the end perception can matter more than the truth. The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, opening commentary, BBC 2009
Lehman Brothers: The market wasn’t appeased. There was a run on the bank. Everyone was dumping shares. Our rating was even downgraded. By Friday afternoon we were gasping for breath. ibid.
‘Is he kidding? I’m not going to go to the Fed and sit outside some goddamned boardroom in which Paulson and my enemies decide my fate!’ ibid.
‘The West is fucked. We fucked it up. Oh not just you and me. All of us. The West. It’s done. It’s over.’ ibid. Hank Paulson
‘So the idea is we spin off another company – a bad bank – where we can place all of our toxic assets. And we’re gonna call it SpinCo.’ ibid. den of thieves
‘You were holding a pair of 8s, dick. And you bet the farm on the river card. The time came when you should have folded and you didn’t. Something in you told you to take the leap. You were remarkable. The blindness was exquisite. ibid.
‘The world has gone to hell in a handbasket. AIG is in the building. They’re haemorrhaging liquidity.’ ibid. Paulson to John the Barclay’s bloke
‘There is public money for a backstop. Have I said that before? We’re at the end. The deal [Barclays/Lehman] is dead.’ ibid. Paulson
In the shadow of the New York Stock Exchange, a walking tour starts: a two-hour stroll of sights and stories. But this isn’t about the normal city stuff. There’s no Statue of Liberty or Empire State building on this route: this is all about money. Sky News: History Repeating? Financial Crisis: 10 Years On, Sky 2018
By 2008 Lehman’s was America’s fourth biggest investment bank. ibid.
Finance companies rushed to offer mortgages to just about anyone. ibid.
In a repeat of the subprime crisis: Is it possible that another storm has been brewing, this time based on the growing mountain of debt held by American companies and by the government? ibid.
Scandal in the City: we investigate the man who gambled billions and lost. The industry knew Neil Woodford was in trouble but no-one told investors. We also reveal how another money man was doing secret deals on the side. As hundreds of thousands count the cost of the Woodford scandal, we confront the man himself. Panorama: Can You Trust the Billion Pound Investors? Richard Bilton investigates, BBC 2019
That new wave of investors: those taking their own risks on the stock market. ibid.
Neil Woodford’s new fund has been a disaster. It’s lost billions. ibid.
Kent County Council tried and failed to take its money back: £260 million of pension cash. ibid.
More than 300,000 investors have their money trapped. ibid.
Some fund managers seem to be able to do as they please. ibid.
Another fund manager breaking rules designed to protect investors: his name is Mark Denning. He’s worked at one of the biggest investment companies in the world for 36 years: Capital Group manages almost $2 trillion of assets … ibid.
On September 15th 2008 Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest investment bank in America, filed for the biggest bankruptcy in history. With $691,063,000,000 of debt, it triggered a global financial crisis. In the years leading up to the disaster, several Lehman Brothers’ employees fought to prevent it. Storyville: Inside Lehman Brothers: The Whistleblowers, captions, BBC 2019
‘I was blacklisted from Wall Street … Lehman had a reputation on Wall Street as being cowboys. And their business practice a bit aggressive … I joined Lehman in 1994: I was vice-president. You were on your toes. You were watching your back. You had to do the best. There was just a certain vibrancy all the time. But I enjoyed that.’ ibid. whistleblower
‘Below that level, in middle management, there were a number of people who were greatly concerned, and believe that Lehman was putting itself at great risk, and that it could be a disaster.’ ibid. Anton Valukas, examiner, Lehman Brother bankruptcy
‘Since 2008 no-one of importance has been convicted.’ ibid. whistleblower
‘In order for them to meet their quotas, they started bringing in junk.’ ibid. mortgage sales woman
Richard D Fuld junior: ‘He was considered one of the most brilliant men on Wall Street’ … Total Compensation: $71.90 million; 5-year compensation Total: $254.03 million. ibid. April 2008
Payments company Wirecard was Germany’s answer to Silicon Valley. Over 20 years it grew to become bigger than Deutsche Bank. Leaks by anonymous whistleblowers were the beginning to the company’s demise. Wirecard: A Billion Dollar Lie, captions, Sky Documentaries 2021
Wirecard enjoyed a meteoric rise as a player in today’s financial world. ibid.
Wirecard shares plummet as auditors warn 1.9 billion Euros is missing. ibid. Financial Times headline
Money was missing from the till. No money was coming in. My gut told me, this is a fraud. ibid. dude
Money laundering, bogus acquisitions, inflated sales, you name it. ibid. Matthew Earl, short seller
Wirecard filed for insolvency on June 25th 2020. It leaves behind 23 billion Euros in damages. Thousands of small investors lost their life savings. ibid. captions
Politicians in the West had given large parts of their power away. What had begun with Bill Clinton in the early 1990s had spread. When Tony Blair came to power he had immediately given control over much of the economy to the Bank of England. But in 1998 the global financial system showed how unstable it could be. An economic crisis that begun in Russia and then spread to Asia had consequences throughout the world. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head IV: But What if the People are Stupid? BBC 2021
Liberal politicians in the West had willingly given up much of their power in the interests of the greater good – a global stability. Power had gone fist to the global financial institutions and now it was being given to the American military as well. ibid.
There’s a conceptual framework with the way people deal with reality … I found a flaw … in the model I perceive. The Flaw, Greenspan, 2011
When they start to treat a good as a financial asset, as people started to do with houses in the boom, that’s when you get into a very unstable market. ibid. George Cooper, fund manager
The fatal flaw was the assumption that real estate values would always go up. ibid. Nell Minow, corporate watchdog
The 2008 financial crisis was far beyond the confines of Wall Street. Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis/Uncovering the Financial Crisis: How the 2008 Panic Unfolded, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Vice/HBO 2023
What happened at Bear Stearns was the first demonstration of what the crisis looked like. ibid. Sorkin
There was an incentive to chop up these loans because along the way there was a profit, a fee for each institution that touched a piece of the loan. ibid. Sorkin
There was so little transparency and so little confidence in these securities that financial institutions were struggling. ibid. Hank Paulson
We were a few days away from the ATMs not working. ibid. dude
It’s embarrassing for the United States of America. ibid. Paulson
The intervention I think saved Depression. ibid. George W Bush
2008: The world would go through one of the biggest crises it had ever witnessed. $19.2 trillion of household wealth would be lost. The Death of the ‘Real’ Economy, Youtube 38.48, Cold Fusion 2022
Speculation started to migrate from stocks into real estate. ibid.
The ratings agencies completely screwed up. ibid.
These products created no value in the economy but were making banks a whole bunch of money … There was no-one supervising any of these products. ibid.
These banks became extremely vulnerable to financial shocks. ibid.
One subprime lender after another files for bankruptcy. ibid.
Wages and incomes continued to languish: the ‘real’ economy was limping … 6 million Americans lost their jobs and 8 million Americans lost their homes. ibid.
These stupid financial experiments aren’t helping. ibid.
Printing trillions of dollars as the economy was slowing to a halt. ibid.