As one of the few to have predicted the 2008 financial crisis, Australian economist Steve Keen has something real to say about the un-sustainability of our current financial system. “Debt that can’t be paid off, won’t be paid off” is essentially the focus of this interview and he talks about how the financial system has allowed levels of debt to reach astronomical levels and in doing so the industry has become parasitic in nature. He argues that a modern debt jubilee (cancelling of debts) is a much more preferable outcome than 20 or so years of slowly paying off the debt in the usual fashion, and the economic stagnation that will accompany it. It will take a bold idea such as this to avoid living through another economic depression.

Frontline spends 54 minutes examining why no Wall Street execs have been prosecuted for any fraud related activities despite their clear knowledge of the toxicity of the bad mortgages contained within the complex financial products they were selling. There seems to be little political will to go to trial and win the tough to prove cases. Is it a case of “too big to jail?”

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

In the final instalment of this four part PBS special the culture of Wall Street and investment banking is explored. It was a culture of making money and everyone was in on it. Bankers, really glorified salesman, were encouraged by management and a system of lucrative bonuses to sell derivatives to everyone, from municipal governments, countries trying to get into the EU, even nuns.

Ethical boundaries were deliberately crossed in the stampede to sell these complex products to unsuspecting customers. Hell, even the bankers themselves didn’t really understand what they were selling. It all looked good on the surface until the market changed in 2008 causing the subprime crisis in America to spread throughout the world.

People around the world felt the pain and the occupy movement rose up out of the millions of unemployed and disillusioned. But despite the resilience of this movement the banks and their lobbyists are still firmly in control and have successfully watered down any attempts to reform the system. So we are still where we are before the crash began. The big banks are still too big to fail and the risky derivative market is (mostly) hidden from regulatory oversight. It appears that the lessons have not been learned.

For me it is only a matter of time until another bubble pops. Again I think a spike in oil prices will prick this bubble just as it has the last several recessions. Add in climate change and the fact that a huge part of the global stock market value is based on fossil fuel reserves that cannot be extracted if we are to have a safe climate, the events of 2008 are just a taste of things to come.

Watch Money, Power and Wall Street: Part Four on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

In the third of a four part series, Frontline takes a look at how freshly elected President Obama dealt with the incredibly daunting task of fixing up the worst economic mess since the 1930′s. A key part of this would be the selection of the economic team that would ultimately deal with the situation. Would he bring in outsiders to reform the system in line with his fiery campaign rhetoric? Or would he stick with the experienced Wall Street players who knew the system?

Ultimately Obama went with the status quo and wasted this once in a lifetime chance to leverage the banks into accepting reform that would address the root causes and help prevent a repeat of the situation.

Watch Money, Power and Wall Street: Part Three on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

In the second of a four part series, Frontline examines how the financial top brass dealt with the dilemma that this systemic risk caused. The basic survival of the fittest ideals of a market system were continually discarded as the reality of the “too big to fail” situation was revealed. Being backed further into the corner the choice between letting the markets self correct or bailing out the banks became increasingly easy to make as it was obvious the system would not self correct. In unplanned desperation Geithner and Paulson turned to the government and managed to produce a blank check which they handed on to the banks.

Watch Money, Power and Wall Street: Part Two on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

In this rather excellent 4 part series the Frontline team from PBS documents the events surrounding the global financial crisis told through the lens of 17 interviews from insiders to give a unique first hand view of how it all unfolded.

The first part covers the build up to the 2008 crash. The repeal of the Glass Steagall Act by the Clinton administration allowed investment banking to merge again with everyday public banking. This helped create the “too big to fail” financial institutions central to the crisis. New fields of financial engineering in derivatives trading created new products such as credit default swaps and collateralised debt obligations (CDO’s) in turn created a new market that was hugely profitable and totally un-transparent. The rational behind it was distribution of risk that would help lower the banks exposure and allow for greater levels of lending. In plain english they created a very complicated means to gamble on both real world market changes and positions that other organisations were taking. Like betting on a football match and then betting on whether your friends would lose money too. This of course did not reduce risk to the system but rather spread it around so that everyone would be exposed as well as create the illusion that the risks were lower than they actually were. The banks loved them and the bubble grew and grew until one day it popped.

I should also add from my energy point of view it was a shame that oil prices were not mentioned once as the pin that burst this bubble, but the mainstream media is still way behind on a lot of things.

Watch Money, Power and Wall Street: Part One on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.