"Tonight's Frontline reminds you why we shouldn't just leave TV newsmagazines to the commercial networks. This hour is devoted to a dense but vital topic: the global economy and how it affects our IRAs and 401(k)s. From Mexico to Russia to Brazil, investors have been pouring billions of dollars into developing nations' coffers, making them at once both richer and less stable. Twice in recent years, the investors have gotten burned, and Wall Street has crashed.

The question is, has anybody learned their lesson? Journalist William Greider thinks not; he's among several experts who carefully explain what's happening and what's at stake. Greider, who almost never gets quoted on commercial TV, is sharp and true on this subject.

It's almost worth spending the hour just to hear his take on the global economy's future."

"Need a good scare?... watch Frontline...If it doesn't make you start hoarding quarters, you've got what it takes to be a global capitalist...

...In examining the rickety underpinnings of the new global economy that many Americans hail as the slickest thing since pay-per-view, 'Frontline' wonders if there's a big economic crash in our own future.

For people not versed in the everyday jargon of arbitrage, producer Sherry Jones does a splendid job of making a point that's easy to miss when the paper money is rolling in. Here's how Robert Johnson, a former portfolio manager for Soros Fund Management, puts it: 'Our stock market's at an all-time high. (But) it's a little bit like fiddling while Rome burns, because the world is struggling all around us.'

...In typical 'Frontline' style, the message of 'The Crash' remains clear and well -stated: Don't get greedy."

"It's hard to recall--or, for that matter, to imagine--a documentary more ambitious than 'The Crash'...Produced and directed by Sherry Jones, one of television's finest public-affairs documentary film makers...

...Watch the hour attentively, and you should come away with some understanding of theories currently fashionable in international-finance circles and a sense that the current world economy is in a dangerously precarious condition. The film's logical structure and carefully edited interviews with many of the key U.S. players make it relatively easy to pick up that much.

But for material this arcane, an hour simply isn't enough time to explain the finer points with clarity. When the jargon starts flowing fast and furiously, viewers will find themselves in a dense fog."

"This Frontline special looks not at 1929, but at the global (yes, that word again) factors behind Aug. 31, 1998's plunge in the Dow that erased a year's worth of gains. George Soros, Jeffrey Sachs, William Greider, Jeffrey Garten and others weigh in on a topic with sobering implications and one bit of comic relief. It comes as Mike McCurry, the president's then-press secretary, introduces Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan at the December 1994 news conference announcing a huge rescue package for Mexico: 'Let me go to people who will be well equipped to answer your questions. And the attribution will be 'U.S. officials.'

A reporter notes that the quite-identifiable Messrs. Rubin and Greenspan are already on camera and asks, 'Isn't that a little ridiculous to put it off camera when these senior officials are standing right here?' 'No, it's not' is Mr. McCurry's reply. Good practice for the White House years ahead."