Video 1: The Inside Story of the Global Financial Crisis
Two of the major things that caused the global financial meltdown in 2008 were the innovation and subsequent abuse of the Credit Default Swap (CDS) and Collaterised Debt Obligation (CDO) instruments by Wall Street’s financial and banking powerhouses.
In fact, the rampant abuse of these financial instruments by greedy bankers eventually sparked off the worldwide financial and economic downturn in 2008 that has brought intense misery to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
So complex were these financial instruments that Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, when asked in a Congressional hearing about ‘Collaterised Debt Obligation’, appeared to be at a loss to describe the financial tool.
PBS is running a terrific investigative story on ‘the inside story of the global financial crisis’. Here is the first part (length 59 min) of the four-part video series.