Inside Job: Bet Against The American Dream!

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

This American Life is a weekly public radio show broadcast on more than 500 stations to about 1.7 million listeners. Produced by Chicago Public Radio, it’s distributed by Public Radio International, has won all of the major broadcasting awards, and is often the most popular podcast in the country, with more than a half million downloaders each week. They’ve won three Emmys for a television version of This American Life on the Showtime network, and they co-produce with NPR News an economics podcast and the blog Planet Money.

On April 9, 2010 This American Life produced a one hour radio show/podcast titled “Inside Job”, to tell the story in an entertaining way of how scams like what Magnetar and Goldman Sachs did happen:

A hedge fund named Magnetar comes up with an elaborate plan  to make money. It sponsors the creation of complicated and ultimately toxic financial securities… while at the same time betting against the very securities it helped create. Planet Money‘s Alex Blumberg teams up with two investigative reporters from ProPublica, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger, to tell the story. Jake and Jesse pored through thousands of  pages of documents and interviewed dozens of Wall Street Insiders. We bring you the result: a tale of intrigue and questionable behavior, which parallels quite closely the plot of a Mel Brooks musical.

Listen to podcast stream here (opens new window)

This American Life also produced a short video of the recording session for their own original Broadway song “Bet Against the American Dream”:

You can read the full Magnetar story here:

The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going

7 comments

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    • Edger on April 20, 2010 at 15:03
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    bet against the American Dream!

  1. …..the  housing market bust?”  ….. or terrorists using jet planes as weapons”.

    Kinda curious how the same terminology is used.

    http://thinkprogress.org/2008/

  2. chance in hell to get on the ballot today?: The Common man, a serious trust buster, an anti-war advocate! Can you imagine if everybody voted then? That was in the age of fat cat Monopolists! We’re in a sorry swamp of dung right now, and I’m losing faith that there’s any way out.

    William Jennings Bryan, Upton Sinclair, FDR: These type of guys are demolished today before they even make a peep. Who’d ever thought that the 1st Amendment would become an electronic commodity owned by the highest bidder and beamed into every house and automobile?

    Strict Construction my sorry ass. The Supreme Court majority is turning Speech on its head; unstoppable propaganda 24/7 and the most sickening worship of, what is actually, the perversion of individual, free enterprise opportunity.

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