This film opened my eyes to a world that I knew existed, but
never really paid much attention to. After all, life is easier when it is at its
simplest. Life is at its simplest when ignorance is at its peak. I find it
interesting that people in this country always lay the blame so readily on
politicians and Wall Street executives. Sure the system is corrupt, but if we
know that why have we done nothing to change it? This is a democracy is it not,
a country run by average run-of-the-mill citizens? Politicians may be corrupt
and take payoffs, but we put them in power. Everything this country accomplishes, and
consequently everything it fails at, is indirectly our responsibility. How can
we so easily condemn executive greed when we were too egocentric to even pay
attention to what was going on? How can one sinner judge another?
The
rich are rich for a reason, they learned how to work the system and took
advantage of that. Why should they be condemned because the general population
was too lazy to create rules to balance and regulate the system? I say bravo,
not too screwing the entire economic system of the U.S. but to the logic and
intelligence it took to do so. The only thing I don’t understand it that by
doing this they get a quick and massive pay day, but in the long run they hurt
millions and even their overall profits. Perhaps the motivation was an early
retirement over an enduring aeon of affluence for their descendants. Even
though the rich walked away with millions they paid a hefty price for their
greed, quite literally.
Ultimately,
if people want to stop corruption in the financial sector, they have to stop
corruption in themselves. To change anything we actually have to find
the self-discipline and the motivation to get up and either work collectively
to change the system or create a new one. The financial sector is in chaos, to fix it order must be invoked.
Even in the video they pointed out how in Iceland “after privatization
(and deregulation) banks collapsed and unemployment tripled.” There has to be a
balance between chaos and order for a society, or a facet of society
like the economy, to thrive.
I included a link to a site about derivative stock trading
since this was something I found somewhat confusing:
I thing you made a very interesting point in paragraph two. Rich people see loops and they jump through them and make another million and the people that are smart enough to notice what they did look the other way, it seems, because they too make a lot more money when such events take place.
ReplyDeleteI like your last paragraph the most. Very true. It's easy for us to point fingers at the wall street people, which we should because they are guilty of many crimes. However, we do need to stop the corruption with ourselves firt.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to address your second paragraph. The film wasn't condemning folk for being rich, it was pointing out how these executives knew they were committing illegal acts and lying to their investors. Also, as the film said, it's hard to lobby for regulation in the financial sector when the lobbyist for deregulation are funded directly by the financial sector. And yes, it did take logic and intelligence to exploit the system but what is logic and intelligence without morals? The thought that, yes I can do something but should I?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Morgan the last paragraph is very true about society! Very well done.
ReplyDelete