The Financial Crisis Was NO Accident-IT WAS A CRIME!!!

[kpete]

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/cannes_film_festival/index.html?story=/ent/movies/film_salon/2010/05/19/cannes_ferguson

"Inside Job "

by digby

I can't wait to see this movie:

If you don't quite get what happened to the global economy over the last two years, or who's at fault, you're not alone. Indeed, that's nearly everyone's situation. The big crash of 2008 and 2009 and its ongoing ripple effects -- such as the European fiscal crisis that's rendering my visit to France a little cheaper every day -- seemed to come from nowhere as if by natural causes, as unpredictable and unmanageable as the Icelandic volcano or a Gulf Coast hurricane.

Charles Ferguson is here to tell the world that the crisis that wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth, threw millions of people out of their homes and out of work, and further widened the gulf between rich and poor was no accident. It was a crime. Ferguson, a former software entrepreneur and policy-wonk scholar turned filmmaker, is definitely no left-wing bomb-thrower or closet Marxist. But he plays one in the movies, you might say. His new documentary, "Inside Job" -- arguably the smash hit of Cannes so far -- offers a lucid and devastating history of how the crash happened, who caused it and how they got away with it.

...........

There was nothing reasonable or decent or redeemable about the world of high finance, in Ferguson's judgment, by the time the 21st-century bubble reached its peak around 2006. As he illustrates with a damning parade of interviews, images and public testimony, the financial industry had ridden 20-plus years of manic free-market deregulation and neoliberal fiscal policy from one crisis to the next, surfing a rising tide of greed and corruption. (There are several people in this movie, prominent among them former George W. Bush advisor Glenn Hubbard and Harvard economics chairman John Y. Campbell, who will rue the day they agreed to talk to Ferguson.)

In a captivating conversation with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (who looks here like a knight in shining armor, believe it or not) Ferguson suggests that the financial industry has become a criminal class insulated from society, where profit justifies everything and morality and ethics, not to mention basic human decency, are totally irrelevant. Gaining remarkable access to a wide range of financial insiders, experts and academics, he builds a persuasive case that by conquering Washington with piles of campaign money and conquering the economics discipline with free-market ideology (and more piles of money), the financial industry built a fortress of deregulation that allowed it to plunder the peasantry with no control or oversight

more:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/no-end-in-sight-sounds-like-movie-weve.html

[msongs]

1. hey let's pass a weakened and watered down financial "reform" bill :-) nt

[paparush]

2. Financial War on the Middle Class.

Fantastic and somewhat related post on DU here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x537054

[malaise]

4. Excellent

Thanks

[malaise]

3. Get thee to the Greatest Page

I can't wait to see Inside Job.

[Drops_not_Dope]

12. Inside Job

that will have to be shown in installments, starting with the installment of Bush in 2001.

[Kokonoe]

5. No, it was capitalism.

If thugs own the government, just change the law.

[librechik]

8. if thugs own the government, how do you change the law?

:shrug:

[rhett o rick]

14. You cant. We are doomed. The general public will go along until they get hungry. Then it will be

too late. We are doomed. I personally will fight them forever.

NGU

[Angry Dragon]

6. K&R

[Wednesdays]

7. K&R

kick

[arcadian]

9. facebooked

k&r

[ErikJ]

10. ONLY solution: Bring back 90% Tax Rate

The only solution is to bring back the pre-Reagan tax rates of 70-90% on the millonaires and billionaires. Ever since Reagan slashed it down to 35 then 28% we have given these BANKSTERS the motivation to make and steal as much money as possible. They are in real competition to see who can make the most billions.

There was not a single banking crisis from 1935 to 1986 when the top rate was slashed to below 50%.
Thom Hartmann is the ONLY commentator of any sort out there that talks about this. Its a credit to his integrity and honesty because he has been pretty wealthy himself.

[rhett o rick]

15. LOL. How exactly will you convince the ruling class to do that? nm

[glitch]

16. With guillotines.

What?

[rhett o rick]

23. That's just a fantasy. First of all pitchforks and hoes cant fight against drones and the army.

Secondly, that type of revolution, if successful (not really a chance) would only replace the current crooks with new crooks.

[glitch]

27. fantasy-killer.

OTOH Armies and drones require energy. I see some potential there.

[rhett o rick]

28. Sorry, but I believe we are beyond fantasy. We need a plan, we need an organization, we need action

s. NGU

[glitch]

29. Not on a public forum we don't

I do agree with the NGU though.

[Greyhound]

21. And triple the capital gains tax and impose a fee on all stock/bond transactions.

Those three things, combined with reigning in the DoD solves or funds the solution to most of our economic, infrastructure, and societal development woes.

[rhett o rick]

25. Just how do you propose to do that? Ask Congress? nm

[Greyhound]

30. Did I say it would be done? No.

The fact remains, however, that these steps would begin to "level the playing field" and wrest control of the nation away from the parasites.

Doing this would require educating generations of citizens in how governance and economy work, as well as restoring their self esteem.

[rhett o rick]

32. I guess I dont understand why you speak of these things that are not possible. You're going

to "wrest control of the nation away from the parasites."? How? IMHO it isnt possible. We are headed for collapse and I dont see any way to stop it.

[Greyhound]

34. I just told you how, and you're right, it won't happen.

People know they want change, they just don't know what change they want, and because they don't understand how much of anything works, they tend to believe the huckster with the slickest line of shit.

I think they think that they can slip the collapse right past enough of the sheeple that they will still deny that it happened as they mortgage their children off to the military and indentured service to whatever corporation makes a bid on them.

After the last 20 years, I'm not betting against them.

[rhett o rick]

35. Sadly I think we agree. nm

[WinkyDink]

31. Thank you. This is THE ONLY way to right the wrongs. Otherwise: Feudalism, 21st C.

[rhett o rick]

33. Yes it sounds so good to say. But tell me how it is possible. nm

[midnight]

11. Yes it was a crime, and from what I can understand was, predicted by Brooksly Born.

[glinda]

13. Please add the BP oil terror attack (to destabilize the world) on the planet to it also.

[glitch]

17. Please desist, pattern-matching is discouraged. nt

[Lagomorph]

18. We kinda figured that out already...

...as well as they're still doing it.

[lunatica]

19. I wonder if they were that nefarious

Was this financial disaster their goal?

I think stupid had a lot to do with it. Being rich doesn't eradicate stupid.

[bertman]

20. Lunatica, the "game" is all about getting more money for yourself, which means that it

has to come from someone else's pile. Over the course of the twentieth century, the financial elites have been getting more and more and more of the treasure of the working classes of the world. So, for me, it's not hard to imagine that they knew that the government would "rescue" them when the casino started going bankrupt. They knew that their dear friends, Ben and Timmeh and Larry would ensure that they received their bailout reward. And they did. To the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars that have been "loaned" to the Banksters by the Fed.

It's true that some of the money boys had to be scapegoats, but out of all the big financial houses only two--Bear Stearnes and Lehman Bros--went down. Did their bosses go broke? Are they living in a car under a freeway overpass due to their irresponsible and criminal acts? I doubt it.

[xchrom]

22. Recommend

[Greyhound]

24. ..

[rhett o rick]

26. Yes we know. But what can we do? Seriously. We have literally no power. nm