I
had many different feelings about this film, two of the major ones being anger
and disbelief. I just cannot believe that so many people can behave in this
way. It's outrageous that all of the people involved with the financial crisis
do not even seem to care. They made millions and that is all they care about.
They do not care that hundreds of thousands of people lost their savings, their
jobs, and even their homes. It is completely unethical to do the things that
they do.
One
of the things that angered me the most was the video clip of some of the people
from Goldman Sachs. They had sold customers bad deals that were rated AAA.
Although they had this rating, the employees knew that they were bad and they
still sold them. To make it worse, they then bet against those same deals. This
made me furious; to think that people could do this to other people just to
make some money.
In
addition to this, the interviews that were presented in the video made it clear
that the people involved knew that what they did and were doing was wrong, they
just did not care. They were always hesitant, said that they didn't understand
the question, changed the subject, avoided the question, or just did not
respond at all. This clearly shows that they knew what they were doing was wrong;
otherwise they would have been straightforward in their answers.
Finally,
I was angered that people knew that this crisis was very probable if nothing
was done to regulate the CDOs, yet nothing was done. Even government agencies
knew years in advance that a collapse was possible and they did nothing.
Regulations should have been put in place to regulate CDOs and derivatives. I
am not by any means for the government regulating everything, but there are
some places they are needed and this is one of them. If the people in charge
would have stepped up and created regulations, the recession we are currently
in would have never taken place.
A good link that shows addition information about how this crisis was avoidable is:
I agree with you that the people are very greedy and that something should have been done to keep this from happening. There was a lot of warnings from different people, yet no one cared. They just wanted millions. They didn't care what it cost everyone else. The rating companies were the same way. They made more money on good ratings, so thats what they gave.
ReplyDeleteGreed, greed, and more greed. This is such a great example of why a system of checks and balances is necessary in squelching the abuse of the system and greed from being excessive. I share in your anger and disbelief as well as frustration with how those in charge got off the hook, or are now assisting our government! You make a lot of good points here and I too think that more government regulation is necessary (in this case).
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