Just watched. It was pure crap. Basically a bunch of New York Times columnists giving their opinions. Who gives a shit what some news paper writer thinks. Lame.
Yes, the mental meltdown that wiped out 90% of the value of the stocks you claimed you bought, and recommended that others buy.
Its a nice reminder that the Dow was still well north of 10K even after the Lehman and AIG failures. It wasn't until the panicked moves of Paulson and Bernanke with their $700 billion plan that the market really started to head south. The fall from 14K to 10,500 is on the bursting of the credit bubble and the recession it caused. The fall since then in stocks and the current depression is on our moronic political leaders.
Tough to really blame them, though. As a country, we want and expect the federal government to fix anything and everything. We can't be bothered to read the contract when we buy our house or even understand what the A in ARM stands for, we expect the government to bail us out if the payments get too high. If we build our house in a ditch and that ditch floods, we expect the feds to immediately rescue our soggy @$$, then build us a new house in the ditch when it dries up. We want everything handed to us by the feds and the bill handed to the guy next door. This isn't the sort of thinking that leads to prosperity.
Excellent episode. It's available to watch online @ the pbs frontline website for those who missed it.