Inside Job ??

[joe blowe]

From: Dennis Mangan
http://mangans.blogspot.com/

Saturday, April 16, 2011
Inside Job

Last night I watched the movie that won the Oscar this year for best documentary, Inside Job, which documents the greed, fraud, and corruption behind the mortgage boom and subsequent financial crisis. While the film is worthwhile, I have some serious problems with it.

For starters, one of the film's main interviewees, one who maintains that he repeatedly warned Alan Greenspan and other government officials of his concerns for a financial train wreck due to irresponsible lending and securitization practices, was a man from the Greenlining Institute. This organization's mission statement reads:

The Greenlining Institute's mission is to empower communities of color and other disadvantaged groups through multi-ethnic economic and leadership development, civil rights, and anti-redlining activities.

In other words, they are a shakedown racket that pressures government to throw more money towards "communities of color"; money, you know, like subprime loans. (By the way, if you want to see some disparate impact, check out their board of directors. They couldn't have fewer whites - namely, zero - if it were planned. Nah, must be a coincidence.)

Other interviewees expressing their disgust for everything Wall Street and Big Bank included Barney Frank (one of the main enablers of Fannie Mae), French finance minister Christine Lagarde, and George Soros.

The point is, when housing was booming, when government was pushing banks to make loans to people unlikely to be able to repay, when the average person saw his house rising in value, no one complained. In fact, all parties concerned wanted more lending, and that includes the investors who ultimately bought the loans without apparently any due diligence, and who are now among the complainers. Now that the boom is over and the economy is in the dumps, scapegoats are wanted, and unsympathetic Wall Street types are conveniently at hand.

It's pretty obvious that some or even many people on Wall Street should be in jail, or at least forced to disgorge their obscene bonuses. But the government and the central bankers and the "community activists" who were as much or more responsible for the financial crisis will never be held to account, and neither are they held to account in this film. Hollywood doesn't award Oscars for politically incorrect movies, and this film assuredly isn't one.

[joe blowe]

Watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4A0RuXhnQA

economic coup d'etat ??
they knew exactly what they were doing

[Austin]

It can all be summed up in 'We gave loans to people who couldn't afford them and were shocked when they couldn't pay what they owed'.

If you want to see that as a conspiracy of greed....eh I suppose so....but it wasn't some grand banker conspiracy. Ironically banks are eating a ton of losses in all this. I must have heard 50 different multi-million dollar foreclosure-lawsuit conversations which went something like 'The press is just all over this shit just eat it and cut our losses and make it go away, she's got an advocacy group and she has the local sheriff on her side who won't evict her'.

That doesn't sound like a very successful banking conspiracy.


Every day I'd hear attorneys bitch about 'these god damn motherfucking robo-signers should all be hanged and lawyers should run the bank instead of having to clean up their shit'.


Banks are centers of chaos. It isn't correct to assume all levels of big finance are some hive of intellect and wisdom with geniuses sitting at tables. Farrrrr from it from my time at one. Upper-class idiots with massive ego's to match their marital problems is more accurate.

[Breedingvariety]

Banks are centers of chaos. It isn't correct to assume all levels of big finance are some hive of intellect and wisdom with geniuses sitting at tables. Farrrrr from it from my time at one. Upper-class idiots with massive ego's to match their marital problems is more accurate.

I agree with this paragraph. Most bank employees are total morons. But top of the pyramid elite know what they are doing.

[Austin]

I agree with this paragraph. Most bank employees are total morons. But top of the pyramid elite know what they are doing.

Eh I don't know that they do really.

Banks are beholden to shared financial entities that have controlling interests within the bank itself on many high levels. The top brass of a bank are no different than the top brass of a company to it's shareholders. They have to keep people happy that have no every-day say in the actual bank operation.

The top level of a bank is still just a highly paid attorney basically. That's all. It isn't some private billionaire with screens of world leaders on the walls. They are people with kids who just crashed their new Porsche daddy got them and are going through a divorce for not being home three days out of the week.

Really rich people in the private sector who work for their wealth are rarely people with naturally non-gray hair and generally are miserable in the extreme. Their whole facade of loving the go-go work lifestyle is to hide their imprisonment-like hell they wake up to every day. If these people take more than three days off a year they can expect to be getting a phone call to cut their pay. They won't though, they have to compete with others to get the yacht, the house in the Bahamas, the Colorado ski home, they must win the game don't you see. I didn't find myself envying them all that much. These people worked easily 55 hours a week. Sure they make 200,000$ a year but their lives were non-existent.