Exploration Eight: Inside Job Response

I was absolutely shocked after watching this film. I had no idea that our government was so corrupt. One of the things that I found most shocking was how the government officials spent their money. They blew their money on prostitutes, cocaine, and multiple private jets. I found the prostitute and cocaine part extremely disgusting. Our government officials are supposed to be viewed as professional leaders of the nation. There is nothing professional about partying with hookers and cocaine. Also how many private jets does one person need? The reasonable answer is one if you can afford it, but the government officials see it fit to possess multiple private jets to show off their greed. It amazes me how they can worry about how many private jets that they have, rather than fixing the economic crisis at hand.

Another thing that I found shocking from the film was that the former government officials that were being interviewed were willing to do anything to save themselves from being responsible for their actions. One of the things that the former governement officials would do when they were faced with a question that they did not want to answer was they would avoid the question. They would just talk about another subject, or they would not even answer the question at all. Another thing that they would do to try to save themselves from being blamed is just simply lie to the interviewer's face. Sometimes, the interviewer even caught them in their lie, but they still tried to work their way around the truth. They acted as if they did not want the truth to be known. For example, during David McCormick's interview, McCormick was asked a question by the interviewer. Then McCormick pointed towards the camera and said, "Can we turn this off for a second?" (Inside Job).

One final thing that left me stunned after watching the film was the selfishness and greediness that the government had. Everyone was out for themselves, and not trying to better the country as a whole. They knew that their actions were going to lead to a huge economic disaster, but they did not care as long as they made their millions of dollars for themselves. A perfect example of this is when the top 5 executives of Lehman Brothers each earned over 1 billion dollars. They all got to keep their shares, even after the company was wiped out (Inside Job). We are deifinitely feeling the affects of the government's poor decisions today. In the 1970's college tuition at the University of California (A public school, like Ohio State) was around $650. Now the tuition is upwards of $10,000 (Inside Job). This economic madness must be put to an end. I think the only way to fix the problem would be for the former government officials to pay off the country's debt. They have the money to pay off a pretty good size chunk of America's debt by themselves. The only problem is that they are too selfish and greedy to care about their nation's economic stance.

Attached below is one good research source.
http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/article/26545/analysis-financial-crisis-2008-explained.html