Apropos my who-watches-CNBC post of this morning, the PBS Frontline episode “Inside the Meltdown” opens with a tick-tock of how a rumor reported on CNBC prompted a chain of events that put Bear Sterns into crisis last spring. If you, like me, missed this Frontline—which offers a walkthrough of how the banking crisis unspooled in 2008, plus some background on its roots in the housing bubble, subprime mortgages, credit-default swaps and other things I am not qualified to explain—it’s online.
It’s usually commercial, for-profit online video efforts that get most of the attention, but PBS does a good job tricking out its offerings with additional information—bonus interview videos, links to related journalism, timeline graphics and so on. If you can bear another hour of depressing financial news, it’s worth your time.