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

Exploration 8: Inside Job

I've seen this documentary once before, but I was able to understand it a bit more the second time through. I find it disturbing that millions of people lost their savings, jobs, and homes because a select few were greedy. What I thought was also disturbing was that there were government officials who did nothing to stop it. It seems as if the CEOs of the companies have a lot of power in congress. As it was stated in the video, "It's a Wall Street government".I feel as if these people have so much power in government because of the investments some of these people put into the candidates and current government officials. I think this is part of the reason they have been able to fight a lot of reforms that have been trying get passed.

Unfortunately, their greed turned out to be a disaster for everyone. When loans began to fail, the investment banks lost an extremely large amount of money. I was surprised when I read that $700 billion in bailout money went to the financial industry. Also, it was hard to believe that during one year, unemployment went from 5% to 10%.

What I thought was interesting about the movie was how many of the people who were involved in the crisis refused an interview. In a way, it almost makes it seem as if they had something to hide.

I believe the best way to prevent such things from happening again is to educate people on the issue. If more people were aware of what was being done behind the scenes, more could be done to stop it before it gets out of hand, just like it did in 2008.

A great resource I used was found at http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/site/#/events

Exploration 8: Inside Job Response

The most important part of the film, Inside Job, was the way in which the information was portrayed to the audience. It was important to have a first-person point-of-view in order to get all the correct information on the topic from people who were actually involved with the incident. The most troubling argument put forth is that of those who are trying to stray the audience from the idea that any wrong-doing was committed during this time. The information seems misleading when they do not have certain members of the incident interviewed for questions. If not everyone will speak who was involved during this time, the audience can never know the full, true story of what happened. Wall Street executives have lots of power in both parties because because they have the money to do so and the money to get what they want. They have kept the power despite changes the same way they have always kept power all along: money. After watching this film, I believe reforms need to be made to Wall Street and the businessmen in the area as it is too corrupt and the men are becoming too powerful. We can research about the stock market and more about how it works to learn more. We should look up how big businesses are doing from day to day to keep ourselves up to date.
"The financial industry is a service industry. It should serve others before it serves itself. " Christine Lagarde said this in the film and I found it interesting that she thought this because most average Americans who have little knowledge about this field and the way it works think that those in the financial industry only care about serving themselves and making money for them first, not for others. I know this is how I feel about this is industry which is why I found this quote from Lagarde in the movie very interesting.
- http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/site/
The above website could help us to better understand the film and research more about the issues in it on our own time and in better depth.

Exploration 8

What stood out the most to me was the fact that mortgage lenders intentionally gave away loans to people who they knew would not be able to pay it off. The people who gave out the loans also continue to make excuses even today. When the questioner was asking why Fredrick Michkin had quit his job during the middle of the crisis, he stated that he "had to revise a textbook." This is very disturbing because people are still not taking responsibility for their actions. As a result, they are making a bad name and appearing childish in front of the entire world.
The information does seem a little incomplete when the video cuts off a response of the people they are accusing. It may be that the person being interviewed will ramble on with more false information, but I feel as if the video should give them a chance to defend themselves even if they are guilty.
Wall Street executives continue to remain in power because of their wealth and their job position. It is a difficult job to find replacements for and politicians know more about the person already in that position than a different person who wants to take that position. The executives used their money to help hide their secrets as well.
I feel as if the people who made money from the recession should be punished with a large portion of their profit going into the economy. The fact that they can get away with such large amounts of money is ridiculous and I feel as if the rest of the country is being cheated out of their money.
 We can learn from our mistakes and have the government keep more of an eye on the banks and the people with major power in larger companies. Banks can no longer be trusted in my opinion but we still use them because we need a "secure place" to put our money.

Exploration 8 Tyler Lacks

    What stood out to me the most from the video was how much corruption showed up throughout the entire marketing business and how we are going deep in debt now because of the lack of regulation on these fraudulent business practices that many large corporations were doing in order to save and gain a few bucks here and there.  The most troubling argument that came from the movie was that when there is fraud throughout the marketing business on an international level with a majority based in our country, there can be severe consequences that can lead to the crippling of a nation financially.  If a nation goes into bankruptcy and can no longer afford a government due to a lack of people having the money to consume in the country or have jobs to pay an income tax, the people lose government sponsored services and cause a larger revolt in the country for reform or collapse.  If the United States fell as a nation, the world we know today would change unimaginably.  China would likely rise and take over our land with other nations joining in and taking their own pieces.  The world would be different for the worse because of the greedy people in business not being satisfied a just being a multi-millionaire and want to become a multi-billionaire instead.
    The most misleading parts are when the interviews have a question asked to someone who seems like they  are being accused of something and they struggle to start a response and it cuts off and goes to a new scene without letting them finish with what could be a legitimate answer and which some could say that it would play against the main argument of the movie.  A lot of Wall Street executives seem to have a lot of power over both political parties because of the amount of money they have and the amount of money that they could get because of the position that they are in.  "When someone left the company, a new person would be hired at one million dollars a month".  They can easily keep their power by keeping any promises of money to the people in Washington.
    After seeing this movie, it seems that we need to start making some laws that make it so that businesses have to start making more of their business information and practices more public to show the public more of what is going on in the business or face large penalties rendering these under the table fraudulent acts not worthwhile in generating revenue and avoiding these poor practices together.  As long as we continue to stay on top of these large businesses and learn from what has happened as a result of poor business practices to try and stay away from another crisis in the future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/economy/26inquiry.html?_r=0

Inside Job Exp 8

These businessmen that work for Wall Street corporate companies, Wall Street government officials, and powerful US banks are all scum. They do whatever it takes to produce as much money as possible despite how badly it can affect their clients or the economy. Goldman Sachs is a corrupt company that would lie and bet against their own stocks to increase their profit. They would promote poor ratings to AAA and that agency credit rating would misguiding. People would be spending money into unsafe agencies and corporate leaders would profit off of that. These powerful companies are only trying to benefit themselves and want to maintain their influence over the world by squashing everyone below them. They are supported by The Federal Reserve and insiders in the government. Lobbyist and businesses corrupt government officials to protect them within Congress, Senate, and even the executive branch. If the economy wants to get better and if the power differential from the 1% and 99% want to become more balance, reform is needed. A good start would be auditing the Fed and uncovering all the hidden secrets that they refuse to release to the public. It is also important that more people are informed about this corruption. Most people assume The President is usually the reason why the economy fails, but the truth is that the reason why the economy fails is because of these corrupt powers in Wall Street, The Federal Reserve, and other government agencies. People need to open their eyes to the truth that corruption derives from these powers and they have the opportunity to change that by voting for things such as an audit of The Federal Reserve. We have the power to vote in un-corrupted government leaders that can reform the entire system. We have to get rid of the old system and begin all over with a new one.

A quote from the film said, "The poorest as always pay the most." This quote describes how every time the government bails out these businesses from failing the ones that are most affected are the working class.They lose jobs, lose homes, and lose all their wealth.

http://personalliberty.com/2012/04/20/federal-reserve-corruption-coming-to-light/

The Inside Job

A common phrase uttered in business nowadays is "with risk comes reward".  Unfortunately, a lot of big corporations have taken this way to far.  The film states, "during the Reagan administration, the beginning of a thirty year deregulation in the financial sector."  When deregulation combines with the financial sector it opens up a lot room for risk, but profit as well.  When the top dogs in business saw the chance to gain more money they never looked back.  No matter how risky the investment was they would still go through with it.  This was the beginning of the financial crisis we've recently gone through.  When CEO's make high risk investments they aren't actually the ones taking the risk.  When the depression hit, a lot of the CEO's got bonus's while everybody else got hurt by it.  It just goes to show how easily money can corrupt people.

On top of CEO's getting big bonuses while the crisis, the 99% (everybody else) was falling into high rates of unemployment.  http://northshorejournal.org/LinkedImages//2010/07/Unem-06-2010-02.jpg