Do you know someone who you would describe as "a pain in the butt?" Someone you avoid as much as possible? Someone who you stop listening to the moment they start talking? Me too.
But after watching the October 20th, 2009 Public Television program Frontline called "The Warning," I'm reconsidering my behavior.
That "difficult" boss, "belligerent" team member and "argumentative" spouse may actually be lifesavers, protecting us from going over a cliff we wouldn't otherwise have seen.
"The Warning" tells the story of Brooksley Born, the first female head of the law review at Stanford, then a partner in a prestigious law firm where she specialized in derivatives law and, in the late 1990s, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) where she became interested in the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market.
At this point, it's hard not to have heard of derivatives and their role in the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.
You may remember that, in the late 1990s, the economy was booming (or seemed to be).
In "The Warning," Arthur Levitt, then head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets along with then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin says that, "I didn't know Brooksley Born.
I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable" (or, as we might say, "a pain in the butt").
In the Frontline program, Levitt, explains how Greenspan and Rubin convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil.
Born was derided, marginalized and ignored.
Ultimately, seeing that no one was paying the slightest attention to her warnings, she resigned from the CFTC.
Paraphrasing the late newscaster Paul Harvey, we all now know the rest of the story, including the astounding admission by Alan Greenspan, testifying before a Congressional committee, that he had been "wrong.
" Lest we take too uncritical a lesson from all this, however, I want to remind you of the fable of Chicken Little who kept warning that "the sky is falling," something that has yet to happen as of this writing.
So I'm not suggesting that we uncritically listen to or act upon the warnings from the "pains in the butt" in our lives.
But I am suggesting that we pay attention.
Sometimes, those pains are just a momentary itch that we can easily scratch away.
But sometimes those pains carry an important lesson that may save us from doing harm to others and ourselves.
But after watching the October 20th, 2009 Public Television program Frontline called "The Warning," I'm reconsidering my behavior.
That "difficult" boss, "belligerent" team member and "argumentative" spouse may actually be lifesavers, protecting us from going over a cliff we wouldn't otherwise have seen.
"The Warning" tells the story of Brooksley Born, the first female head of the law review at Stanford, then a partner in a prestigious law firm where she specialized in derivatives law and, in the late 1990s, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) where she became interested in the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market.
At this point, it's hard not to have heard of derivatives and their role in the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.
You may remember that, in the late 1990s, the economy was booming (or seemed to be).
In "The Warning," Arthur Levitt, then head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets along with then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin says that, "I didn't know Brooksley Born.
I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable" (or, as we might say, "a pain in the butt").
In the Frontline program, Levitt, explains how Greenspan and Rubin convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil.
Born was derided, marginalized and ignored.
Ultimately, seeing that no one was paying the slightest attention to her warnings, she resigned from the CFTC.
Paraphrasing the late newscaster Paul Harvey, we all now know the rest of the story, including the astounding admission by Alan Greenspan, testifying before a Congressional committee, that he had been "wrong.
" Lest we take too uncritical a lesson from all this, however, I want to remind you of the fable of Chicken Little who kept warning that "the sky is falling," something that has yet to happen as of this writing.
So I'm not suggesting that we uncritically listen to or act upon the warnings from the "pains in the butt" in our lives.
But I am suggesting that we pay attention.
Sometimes, those pains are just a momentary itch that we can easily scratch away.
But sometimes those pains carry an important lesson that may save us from doing harm to others and ourselves.
SHARE
