‘Panic’ on HBO Finally Reveals How Close America Was in The Fall of 2008 To Plunging Into A Second Great Depression

When I think back to the fall of 2008 and worst economic collapse of our lifetime, what I remember most is getting email bouncebacks at work from my peers over at Bear Stearns and thinking to myself, “Well, guess he didn’t make it.” That and walking past Lehman the day it died, watching people carry their things out in boxes while hundreds of news cameras were rolling. I remember everyone in my office feeling lightheaded —the feeling I imagine you get when staring into the abyss— when the bailout vote failed in Congress, and I’ll never forget the moment when one of my colleagues asked me if they should make a run to the ATM to drain their checking account so they’d have access to cash if we ended up in Worst Case Scenario territory.

The 2008 financial crisis saw millions of Americans lose their jobs, their homes, and perhaps most distressingly, their faith in the American dream. But here’s the thing: things could have been much worse. Much, much, MUCH worse, in fact. The inside story of the race to save the global economy from a second Great Depression is the focus of HBO’s tremendous new special from VICE, PANIC: The Untold Story of the Financial Crisis. Assembling an unprecedented who’s who of government officials, Wall Street titans, and financial journalists, this is the behind-the-scenes story of what really happened in those crazy few months of 2008, told to us by the people who were there on the frontlines. By gaining access to this lineup, providing viewpoints from both financial markets and the government, we gain an appreciation of how uniquely suited the people involved in the rescue were for the task of averting economic Armageddon, and how close they came to failing.

PANIC begins by showing a September 2018 reunion of of the key players from this event; dozens of government officials and legislators have assembled to discuss the lessons of the crisis 10 years later. It’s here we begin to appreciate the stellar lineup VICE and HBO have put together for this special: Former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, former Federal Reserve Chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, former Congressman Barney Frank, former Senator Chris Dodd and many more are present at the meeting offering their insights into what went right and what went wrong. As the special continues, we also get to hear from Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as from Wall Street CEOs Jamie Dimon and John Mack. This movie is like Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Rolodex come to life. (Spoiler alert: Sorkin is a talking head here, too.)

This incredible access comes with the added benefit of getting the story and perspective from both Wall Street as well as D.C., and seeing how much of a gulf existed between the two in understanding the other. At a pivotal moment in September of 2008 when the bailout vote in Congress initially failed, Wall Street was shocked and surprised at how unbelievably stupid and naive the legislators and our government were about the markets. I remember people shouting “These idiots have no idea what they’re doing!” and “I can’t believe this!” at the TV screens tuned to CNBC in our office when stocks started to nosedive. Meanwhile, the legislators were shocked how tone deaf Wall St. was with banks continuing to dole out bonuses while receiving a lifeline from the taxpayer. Caught in the middle was the public, who were watching their 401ks get vaporized while greedy bankers and bickering Congressmen were seemingly indifferent to their suffering.

What the public didn’t understand then, and what this documentary does a great job of showing, is that the horrific 2008 crisis could have been even worse were it not for the group of people who saved the global financial system from complete collapse. Early on in PANIC, we see President George W. Bush select Hank Paulson for treasury secretary and Ben Bernanke to run the Federal Reserve. The two could not come from more different backgrounds — Hank had been CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Bernanke was a Princeton professor — but it was their diverse backgrounds and skillsets that were key to addressing the crisis. Completing the team was Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Fed, the Federal Reserve’s eyes and ears on Wall Street. In hindsight, we can appreciate this was financial world’s equivalent to the Dream Team. Together, they were charged with putting out a fire the likes of which hadn’t been seen before, financial contagion spreading through the American banking system while millions of Americans were losing their homes and jobs.

As Sorkin describes in the film, there was no handbook or roadmap on what to do, and so it was up to Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner to come up with a solution that would not only stop the bleeding, but one that was politically acceptable to the legislators in Congress who had to answer to voters. What’s impressive is seeing the sacrifices they were willing to make- Paulson working himself to the point of his health failure and President Bush willing to make the politically poisonous decision to bail out financial firms, saying he’d rather be remembered as Roosevelt than Hoover (it’s worth noting here that this crisis happened at the tail end of Bush’s second term in office). It was especially perilous given that the crisis was happening right in the middle of an election, and legislators and the presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain had to juggle policy with optics while the fate of the world hung in the balance. (The late Senator McCain, in particular, is done no favors by this documentary; he appeared to be in significantly over his head and unfit to be President during such a tumultuous time.) The fevered populism and distrust in institutions that resulted would have lasting effects, and explains much about our current political climate.

Bottom line: PANIC is incredible. The access VICE got is unprecedented, and the no narrator format succeeds because it lets the people who were there tell the tale in a fairly unbiased fashion. We get the whole story of the crisis first hand, retold moment by moment in unfiltered and stunning detail. While I would have liked for them to call out the ratings agencies for the role they played in causing the crisis, and the poor choices made by finance executives like Dick Fuld and the entire AIG Financial Products division, I can’t help but be impressed by what PANIC has accomplished. Ten years on from the meltdown, we finally have the definitive story of what happened.

Comfortably Smug is a government relations professional with a focus on the financial services industry. He can be found on Twitter with his musings on all things finance and politics at @ComfortablySmug

Watch the Vice News special Panic on HBO Now