From the 2010 News Archive

Prof. Greenberger Featured in Polk Award-Winning Story

A "60 Minutes" story featuring Law School Professor Michael Greenberger, the Founder and Director of the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security, was recently named the recipient of the 2009 George Polk Award for National Television Reporting. CBS News reporter Steve Kroft and producer Leslie Cockburn will be honored for the story, "The Price of Oil," which explained how Wall Street speculation rather than supply and demand very likely drove record price fluctuations in oil markets.

Watch the story and read the script here.

The George Polk Awards in Journalism were established in 1949 by Long Island University to recognize excellence in print and electronic journalism. Professor Greenberger was also interviewed extensively in the film "American Casino,” a critically-acclaimed documentary that chronicles predatory lending and the subprime mortgage crisis from Wall Street to Main Street, which was co-produced and directed by Leslie Cockburn.

"[Michael] Greenberger, a talented explainer, charts the development of more and more complicated and preposterous instruments, ending with credit-default swaps ... His passionate exposition gives us the strongest emotional release we get from the material," said film critic David Denby of The New Yorker.

Professor Greenberger is a former director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and an expert on financial regulation and complex financial derivatives.

Posted by Carrie Oleynik on February 22, 2010.

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