Put this on the curriculum. Mandatory viewing as a component of the standard school syllabus for all ten year-olds. So they can understand how & whom wronged them so badly & the source of so much contemporary woe.
The 2008 financial collapse. One of the greatest crimes in human history that’s wrought magnificently awful devastation & fallout, still very’ very much ongoing. Followed swiftly by an equally iniquitous crime – the political reaction – i.e. the immeasurably perverse decision to bailout the offender with the victim’s money and, to furthermore, do practically nothing to alter/re-regulate/safeguard against the corrupt system/players that allowed such an ineffable disaster to materialize. The larger the crime/the worse-more extensive the effects, the easier it is to get away with. This uniquely deleterious catastrophe, has been the pretext for “austerity” i.e. “economic extremism”, another super crime that challenges definition in it’s giganticness & the sheer weight of it’s destructive effects. Side-stepping all the smashed-lives, suffering, ruination & grief this continues to cause, the sociopolitical results of this crisis riddled crucible have given us unimaginable deviations & deterioration such as the ascendancy of the Trump Disintegration, a plague of populist pricks, & in the tersest & most minimalized assessment – peril, poverty & plutocracy the world over, breaking records &/or restoring “feudal” worst-case standards of destitution & doom.
How did we get here? Who & indeed what was responsible? Charles Fergusons storming classic resoundingly captures the culprits & sifts the mega malfeasance, stupidity, incomparably outrageous greed, suicidal recklessness (it turned out to be someone else’s suicide, & was more like a massacre) & moral-less avarice in all it’s horrible, fiscal-jargon complexity. Securitizations? Collateral Debt Obligations? Speculation? Derivative Markets? Sub Prime Mortgages? Credit Default Swaps? Gramm Leach Bliley? Glass Steagall? – leave it to “the experts” & “economists”…”trust us”. We did! & they fucked it up in the most dramatic, severe & far-reaching definition as could ever have been afflicted. Shocking? We are talking cardiac arrest here. It is U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-E!!! & all the warnings were consistently, ignored, overridden, deliberately discredited & sidelined with full-knowledge of the danger being gambled.
This doco is still unquantifiably vital, as this catastrophe (we are screaming towards a second crash) is so easily buried, obscured, falsified, reshaped, played-down or pinned-onto phantom culprits or scapegoats by those responsible or those abetting those responsible. Who can forget Mervin King some years back urging that it’s “time to stop the banker bashing”. Actually arsehole, the “bashing” never even began. Which is a big part of the problem & why, without having to undergo any real consequences, the shits are at it again. Inside Job cuts through & manages to evince this intensely inhuman realm of economics gone bad. Even if you can’t tell your CDO’s from your CDS’s, this explicates the enormity of malfeasance that transpired in indubitable terms.
It also, albeit briefly, covers the “cocaine & prostitutes” obsession that follows this profession with such profusion. A “Madame” who formerly ran an elite prostitution ring a few blocks from the New York Stock Exchange dishes-out just a little of the dirt. Why not a little class-A drug binging & whore-hiring along with mega larceny, embezzlement & mass fraud? scoop til’ you puke!
My man Eliot Spitzer donates some great commentary. They took his arse out something ruthless over a spot of the ol’ extramarital shortly after. Strauss Kahn is here as well, contributing some great confab. He also got the ultra-disqualification & disgrace frenzy from opprobrium in New York that flattened him for good.
I watch this documentary about once a year. To keep it fresh, limber & remind me of this epic, unresolved crime that’s still poisoning every breath. The shit spewing out of our wounded world today owes so much to this truly historic incident of unrivaled criminality, & it’s not going to mend until this is restituted in full. Fuck austerity! It’s not our debt. On the contrary – they owe us!
Director-Charles Ferguson
Sony Pictures (2010)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/videoplayer/vi751502873?ref_=tt_ov_vi