HBO to Dramatize The Financial Meltdown In All Its Gory Details

by James Camp | 10:07 am, March 7th, 2010

» 1 comment

Like those who enjoy their car-chases, their full-frontal nudes, their dance-and-song ensembles, the strip of the populace tickled by the thought of Hank Paulson cringing over a toilet is now, evidently, sufficient to launch a movie.

Various news sites are reporting that HBO has acquired the rights to Too Big to Fail, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s prodigious chronicle of the financial crack-up of 2008. Aside from Peter Gould, who has been tagged to distill a screenplay from the book, and executive producers Paula Weinstein and Jeffrey Levine of Spring Creek, no names have been attached to the project.

Great with math – at 624 hardcover pages, Sorkin’s book shirks few of the difficulties of fathoming why Wall Street fell asunder – Too Big is also a prolific voyeur. We see Paulson, stupefied by pressure, vomiting with the stress of his office. We see Lehman Brothers’ Richard Fuld sobbing as his firm goes belly up. Too Big is a saga, in other words, not only of avarice and egotism but of the spontaneous discharge of bodily fluids, enacted by oldish white guys against a backdrop of impenetrable spreadsheets.

My question is, at whom will HBO be aiming this? The excreting-elderly-white-guy-demographic (a devout lot, no doubt)? Wonks who like a good cry? Or will it be a flick for those who prefer their Schadenfreude still raw with the recent past? More to come on this.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, HBO, The Economy, Too Big To Fail

Azarkhan

Mr. Camp, for your pleasure, I present exhibit A of “excreting elderly white guys” who might be interested in the HBO special, the singularly grotesque but always amusing Democratic Rep. from Massachusetts, Mr. Barney Frank.

I won’t bother detailing his sexual relationship with Herb Moses, a former executive at Fannie Mae, or the thousands of dollars he received in contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I’m sure an excellent journalist like yourself is already fully aware of these blatant conflicts of interest.

I’d rather highlight his role in undermining sound banking practices and in sabotaging efforts to bring stricter controls to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After all, the likelihood that the “excreting elderly white guys” and excreting white women who run HBO might actually tell the truth is rather slim.

*In 1991, Frank and former Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., lobbied for Fannie to soften rules on multi-family home mortgages although those dwellings showed a default rate twice that of single-family homes. (Boston Globe, Nov 22, 1991)

*…All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. “Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor,” the Fed’s guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as “valid income sources” to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit. (Boston Globe, Sept. 28, 2008, article titled “Frank’s fingerprints are all over the financial fiasco”

*In 2003, when the “Bush administration recommended [a] significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry…”, Mr. Frank , the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, said:
”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.” (New York Times, Sept. 11, 2003)

*But [Frank] opposes giving Treasury the right to approve or disapprove business activities. He said he worries that Treasury would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies’ market risks. (Washington Post, Oct 8, 2003)

BTW, Mr. Camp, I noticed that you’re a white guy yourself. Excrete much?