Think of the saddest tearjerker movie you’ve ever seen, now prepare for it to become #2 on the soggy hankie list.
The documentary Inside Job is a must-see film about the financial meltdown that crippled the world thanks to the piggy greed of fat cat pin stripers on Wall Street and in the government.
There’s plenty of evil bastards to blame: financial firm scumbags, shady politicians in the pockets of lobbyists and academics getting their palms greased to concoct and support the tools for raping the public to benefit the rich.
Inside Job brilliantly shows us how we’ve gotten to the place we are today–– with 1% of the nation’s population controlling 23% of its wealth.
There are heroes in this movie; people who spoke and wrote and questioned the madness that was going on, all to no avail. Reason lost out to greed; the greed of financial firms to gamble, the greed of politicians to allow the rules to change to protect the greedy and the greed of the public to actually believe they could get something for nothing (or next to nothing).
None of it would have been possible had the laws not been changed and had regulation been enforced. But it wasn’t. We let Alan Greenspan and the Wall Street goons lead us down an ideological path to the guillotines.
The fix was in–– the bastards won, our economy almost collapsed and the public bailed out all those responsible.
The saddest part of all is this: nothing’s really changed except that we’ve had our coffers raped. The rich are richer. Too big to fail is now super-sized too big to fail. Politicians are still funded shills for our corporate overlords.
Inside Job lays it all out and you can see many of the worst elements of our society on camera actually trying to support their cases. In the end, we’ve all been played for suckers, and while I’d love to say this is a movie that could never be made again, I’m afraid such is not the case.
As Charles Ferguson, the filmmaker said in his Academy Awards acceptance speech for best documentary, “Not one of these guys is in jail yet.” And the very same people responsible for much of the robbery are still empowered in government, still lobbying, still playing three card monty with bad debt. We can all sleep well knowing the foxes are guarding the hen house.
Cry, America. Cry enough to wring your hankie because your wallet’s already been wrung dry.
11 responses to “Cry, America, Cry”
Nice fox line, thee. Sad flick. Mad flick, really.
Yeah, TD– it’s a very anti-Hollywood tale. The underdog gets the crap beat out of him and is left by the side on the road.
Having been one of the financial piggies, I took two big exceptions to this film. The first was that Wall St. creates nothing of value. I helped quite a few film and ad people retire, put their kids through college, etc. The second was the insinuation that lots of people knew the degree of danger present in the 2007 economy. Here’s a good explanation of that http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-inside-job-got-wrong/2011/05/19/AGgGoJgH_blog.html
Don’t hate me for being a stickler for accuracy. I hate greedy bastards, too.
Kitty, you are more qualified than most to comment since this is your world. That was an interesting and informative article. I’m afraid the most aggravating thing of all is the notion that any regulation, any government influence is always bad– that the free market knows best. Always.
No, not necessarily.
As the guru Greenspan admits years later, “Maybe we were wrong.”
As with all documentaries, there is certainly a biased point of view. Thanks, Kitty, for showing the holes.
You are right about the abject failure of that unfettered free market capitalism thing, Pat. Without any doubt. Regardless of any level of regulation, you are also right that something really bad will happen again. The consolation is that this was an unlikely perfect storm of Wall St. entering the mortgage business, selling off all their risk and the ratings agencies asleep at the wheel. Your bleeding heart capitalist pal, Kitty
I am also an unabashed capitalist. That said, I hate playing when it seems the game is rigged.
Just ain’t fair.
The amazing thing is that the Obama administration has done nothing in the way of prosecuting the thousands of wrongdoers. The name of the game now is to admit you did wrong, say you won’t do it again, and pay a fine, vis a vis JP Morgan’s recent paying of a quarter of a billion dollar fine for having rigged the bond market for the last 10 years.
Sorry–JPM rigged the municipal bond market, though they probably had a hand in messing with the regular bond market too.
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2011/07/not-prosecuting-white-collar-financial.html
Yes, it doesn’t seem to matter which political party is in power, the people are funded by the same financial fatcats who will pull their strings and make them dance to whatever tune they choose.
We need some bodies in jail. We need some justice!
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/jp-morgan-chase-fine-another-slap-on-the-wrist-for-wall-street-20110708
Thanks, Lud.
More proof that we need to get some rope and hang some of these bastards.