Tag: Frontline

Frontline Investigates Bank of America and the Government’s Role in the Banking System

frontline
Tuesday night is the premiere of Frontline’s latest report: Breaking the Bank. The report is supposed to include high-profile interviews with key players Ken Lewis and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain and will reveal the story of two banks at the heart of the financial crisis and their rocky merger. It may also look at the implications of the government’s new role in taking over (“nationalizing”?) the American banking system.

“The bets were huge and risky—billions of dollars on the housing market. The upside was undeniable—superbanks reaped billions of dollars, dominated the landscape, and gobbled up competitors. Then the bottom dropped out—the massive losses on Wall Street nearly broke the banks. In the worst crisis in decades, brand name banks are on the brink. Now as the federal government implements an unprecedented intervention in the industry, FRONTLINE goes behind closed doors to tell the inside story of how things went so wrong so fast and to document efforts to stabilize Wall Street. Veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Inside the Meltdown) untangles the complicated financial and political web threatening one particular superbank-Bank of America.”

UPDATE: The full version of the program is now available for viewing online: Breaking the Bank.

Here is a preview:

If you missed them, the Frontline reports on Inside the Meltdown and the Madoff Affair were wonderful and worth your time to watch. They are available online:

Watch Frontline’s “The Madoff Affair” Online

For those of you who missed last night’s airing of “The Madoff Affair” it’s now available online.

The program has a startling interview of Michael Bienes, one of the first people to set up a feeder fund for Madoff. Bienes describes those early years as “easy, easy-peasy, like a money machine.” When asked if he had ever questioned Madoff about his approach, Bienes says: “Never. Why would I ask him? I wouldn’t understand it if he explained it.” Bienes didn’t know how Madoff was doing it. “How do I know? How do you split an atom? I know that you can split them; I don’t know how you do it. How does an airplane fly? I don’t ask.”

My previous assumption was that Madoff started off legitimate and went bad somewhere along the way. Based on the Bienes interview I am rethinking that assumption. It sounds like Madoff went bad very early on, maybe even from the beginning.

You can watch the video below:

There is additional material on the Frontline website for The Madoff Affair:

Coming Attractions – Frontline Reports on Madoff

madoff

Next month, Frontline is running a report about Bernard Madoff on a PBS station near you. The episode premiers the week of May 12.

“Bernard Madoff’s success as a broker made the competition wonder how the man could produce such steady returns in good times and bad. The SEC investigated several times over the last two decades, but Madoff remained untouched until last December when he admitted it was all “one big lie.” Frontline producers Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria unravel the story behind the world’s first truly global Ponzi scheme – a deception that lasted longer, reached wider and cut deeper than any other business scandal in history.”