Film Review: Inside Job Playing at Plaza Theatre
If you, like me, knew we were robbed by Wall Street and the US government in 2008 but are not sure how they did it, then go see Inside Job.
Inside Job the eye-opening, jaw-dropping documentary by Charles Ferguson is now playing at the Plaza Theater on Ponce de Leon at Highland. You can also download the documentary online. This is the one movie everyone must see because nothing has changed to keep the criminals from doing it again.
The financial collapse of 2008 was the biggest transfer of money (robbery) from the people to a few Wall Street elites in the history of the world. It could have been avoided and it was a deliberate conspiracy by greedy, psychopathic individuals on Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, with help from corrupt politicians, academia, and deregulation starting with former President Ronald Reagan and continuing through all administrations up to the present.
The global financial meltdown cost over 20 trillion dollars (that’s trillion with a T) and resulted in millions of hard working and honest people losing their homes and jobs. The root of the crisis was caused by deregulation, conflicts of interest, incompetence, and above all GREED!
I, along with others, questioned why the government didn’t give the $700+ billion bailout (or even less) to the taxpayers to spend on necessities, which would have really stimulated the economy. But no, they gave the money to the very people who caused the financial collapse.
The documentary “Inside Job” explains what happened. The banks began giving loans to everyone and anyone who wanted to buy a house at ridiculously high interest rates. The lenders or banks then turned around and sold these high interest mortgages to third parties. This 3rd party (for example, AIG) bundled all the high interest debt into collateralized debt obligations or CDO’s. People at the brokerage houses called the CDO’s worthless junk but got the rating agencies (Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s) to rate them as AAA investments. You need an AAA or AA rating before pension funds and city government will invest.
AIG allowed speculators to purchase insurance or Credit Default Swaps against CDOs they did not own. The financial institutions like Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs who were selling the worthless junk CDO’s to investors as AAA investment then turned around and bought Credit Default Swaps on the CDO’s, betting the CDO’s would fail. Goldman Sachs make billions betting against the CDO’s they were selling to investors.
AIG could not pay off all the Credit Default Swaps when the CDO’s failed. Guess who bailed out AIG and paid off Goldman Sachs’s big win on the Credit Default Swaps? That’s right, the taxpayers or suckers as some on Wall Street think of us “Little People.” It was all a big Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Maddoff proud.
This criminal fraud and conspiracy against the people and the economy could not have happened without the deregulation of the banks and the financial institutions. Nor without the supporting cast of former CEO’s and executives from various financial institutions who hold government and cabinet positions and act as financial advisors to the President and the Congress.
Inside Job exposes the shady dealing and favorable laws passed by Congress, including HR 5660 which banned regulation of derivatives; and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which overturned Glass-Steagall, thus allowing single institutions to operate banking and gambling [investment] operations.
Our own government passed the laws which enabled the criminals to loot the middle class.
Obama has some of the same architects of the financial collapse (Henry Paulson, Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner) as his financial advisors.
This is like the crooks (Wall Street executives) being on the Board of Directors of the Bank and advising the bank president (Congress & White House) on how to leave the door open and the safe unlocked so they can steal the money.