Dispatches from the Creation Wars

I highly recommend 60 Minutes. They do a lot of great science pieces and this is one of the more mediocre pieces they've done on the credit crisis. They did three segments that did a great job of explaining mortgage-backed securities, how they're hedged, the size of the market prior to the balloon and at its apex, and the ease at which we could have known about this in advance.

Scott Pelley especially distinguishes himself though its been Steve Kroft whose covered the Wall Street story, where he's done yeoman work. I like Pelley since he's very well prepared for the segment and therefore anticipates what his interview subjects may say and drills down to reveal the core issues. An increasingly rare trait. Kroft does a good job of this as well, though not great.

Lesley Stahl remains cringe-worthy yet they still give her projects way beyond her talent, e.g., the Antonin Scalia profile. However she's the exception to the rule.

I did boycott all of CBS News for a couple of decades given that they did a segment of a friend of mine in the 1970s and totally misrepresented what the story was going to be about and didn't honestly frame his behavior accurately either. However I think they've evolved way beyond those deficiencies.

The production team ultimately turned their taping into a special show broadcast in prime-time (back when that meant something regarding viewer numbers) called The Guns of Autumn. The show depicted hunting in a manner that is not totally representative but instead focused on the worst aspects of hunting, which are real and should be revealed. But my friend and his family are the good guys and they were portrayed as one of the bad guys (assuming you're pro-hunting and you eat what you kill).

My friend and his sons were great endurance runners who hunted bears with dogs. They'd run behind their dogs as their dogs chased a bear through the swamps and forests where I live. Once the bear was treed, they or someone they were guiding would shoot the bear, which is eaten. Sometimes the bear is wounded and the dogs go after him until the lead hunters can wade in and finish off the bear. The client never drove up to kill sites since this forest doesn't allow off-road vehicles though it does have dirt roads. However it's not unusual for clients to have to hike more than 1/2 mile to two or three miles from the nearest road once the bear was treed (clients communicated then with walkie-talkies to the Mummerts) or the fitter ones followed along as best they could behind the dogs and Mr. Doug Mummert or his sons.

Mr. Mummert is also famous in these parts for fighting to keep oil and gas operations out of the forest where he hunted, along with keeping out mechanized vehicles as well. A couple of court cases went to the state Supreme Court where those rulings were used as case studies for the feds and other states to develop superior environmental protections. None of this was portrayed in this show. Instead IIRC, it was mostly focused on the dogs battling a wounded bear for a few seconds.

There was a nasty lawsuit on this as well though I forgot the results. CBS News presented the show as a bicentennial special on how hunting had changed little from 1776 to 1976, tough it aired a year or two prior to 1976. That perspective was not the featured aspect, reminds me of the Expelled producers lying to Richard Dawkins and PZ.

Here's a link to the story by Sports Illustrated: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1090248/index.htm

I can't imagine Mr. Mummert or his sons drinking at the kill site, perhaps they also filmed different bear hunters from other areas. His sons were barely teenagers then and I never saw Mr. Mummert take a drink though I haven't seen this show since it first aired 35 years ago. In addition, all good hunters gut their large kill at the kill site, mostly to protect the meat from bacteria and since most of the organs aren't easily edible, to make for an easier trek out of the woods since you drag your kill out, again sometimes a couple of mile trek.

It should also be noted that in this area, there are a lot people who hunt for meat, not just sport. My family, including me, eat wild game year-round. It's far healthier and it gets conservative populists to help protect large plots of land through both political support and money received through hunting licenses.

Posted by: Michael Heath | March 19, 2010 9:51 AM

I respectfully disagree, Joseph. The problem would not have been contained, it would have been, at best, delayed.

Posted by: Joseph | March 19, 2010 10:14 AM

"If everything else had been healthy, the problem would have been contained."

If everything else had been healthy, there wouldn't have been a subprime problem. Problems like that don't exist in isolation; they're symptoms of rot and corruption throughout the system. The conditions that allowed the subprime mortgage market to get so bad affected everything in the financial industry.

Posted by: Moopheus | March 19, 2010 10:41 AM

Subprime allowed the bubble to inflate far beyond what was possible without it. Had mortgage standards been enforced, much less money would have gone into the sector. There would have been less or no over-building, smaller, cheaper houses instead of McMansions, and no re-financing escalator which prompted people to use their houses as ATMs to pay for increased, unsustainable consumption.

The US balance of trade was hurt too. "Drive until you qualify" increased commutes and fuel consumption. All this extra fuel comes from imports. The subprime bubble has given us problems which will take decades to unwind even if the debt was forgiven tomorrow.

Posted by: Cynical | March 19, 2010 12:49 PM

The part I do not like about this is the 'subprim mortgages' makes it sound like people trying to get a home was the fault. They weren't!!! Its the banks and it should be 'subprime loans' any kind. I'm sure wall st have bigger direct loses then homes did. Because you still have the house that can be wheeled-&-dealed.
My kid tried to get a home loan, without asking any questions but one-what is the monthly income- they offered a mortgage of $5000/mo!!!! Luckily she isn't an idiot and gave the bank the riot-act for stupidity (she couldn't afford that) and settled on a mortgage she could afford. That was just pure BS incompetence on the part of the bank (I had to go thru a full financial exam for my mortgage!!). So yes mortgages were a very visible part only as the banks were being stupid on all fronts, but the rich wheeler-dealers just kept a lower profile.

Posted by: CybrgnX | March 19, 2010 8:32 PM