Part 1 of four FRONTLINE documentary exposés chronologically unveils the causes and effects of the 2008 global financial crisis. A litany of finite research consistently points to the coagulation of negligence and deregulatory actions of government, culminated by greed and corruption on Wall Street, nearly spelling a depression. The origin of the world wide credit boom in the 1990's is examined by defining what credit derivatives and synthetic collateralized debt obligations are. Members of the JP Morgan Bank team responsible for inventing the first credit default swap in 1994 are interviewed. Gillian Tett, the first journalist to uncover this scheme explains “they began to look for ways to enable financial institutions to pass risk between them[…]another way though, was to separate out the risk of a loan going bad from the loan itself, and out that came this drive to develop credit default swaps". This documentary sheds light of the attempts and vocalizations of regulators and select government employees prophetically warning the public of the possible calamity if no regulations are implemented. In a linear steadfast, the ire then focuses on Alan Greenspan, then chairmen of the Federal Reserve, advising President Clinton to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. This directly lead to the inception of mortgage credit risk and predatory mortgages; causing the housing bubble. In 2008 the bubble burst and as Roy Barnes, the former (D.)Governor of Georgia proclaims "The greed of Wall Street broke Main Street."
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