When I first heard about this film last winter (Cannes Film Festival) I wanted to find a 'trailer' for it, and went so far as to research and find the producers of the film and wrote to them. They were kind enough to write me back, to let me know at the time, that they had no trailer as of the date I wrote to them. But now, they do, and the film is stunning, simply amazing in its depth, breath and 'truthiness' on the reason our nation is now in the grips of another new Great Depression.
Make no mistake about it, we are in the fix we are in (with absolutely no way out, until we as a people and a nation finally face up to the epic fraud and corruption, and demand that those Corporations, the Wall Street Bankstas, the SEC, the captured Regulators, the Liar Loan Lenders club, are fully prosecuted and brought to justice in our nation.
Sooner or later, what has occurred is in fact catching up with our own President Obama, and those that he knowingly chose to continue in this epic 'cover up.'
Why are investors leaving the Stock Market in droves?
Why are people now taking money out of their 401k's at an alarming rate?
Why are we moving into a state of 'deep extremism' in our national political body?
Why hasn't there been any meaningful and workable solutions to the continued and horrifying 'foreclosure problem,' fueled by the same loss of jobs in our nation?
It all goes back to the same reason: It is called the public trust, and it has been broken and confidence in our government and its key financial sectors are still maintaining the 'status quo' and business as usual. This is a very dangerous gamble on their part, and the only ones that are paying for this fraud and cover up, are the citizens and Middle Class of our country.
There are two worthwhile articles to read today, if you can find the time. The first is on Naked Capitalism and here is one quote from that excellent article:
The Economy Won’t Recover Until We Prosecute
So there was a little fraud, no big deal, right? Wouldn’t looking backwards at fraudulent conduct be distracting for the people, the government, and the economy? Shouldn’t we look forward so we can recover? No. Specifically, the Wharton School of Business has written an essay stating that restoring trust is the key to recovery, and that trust cannot be restored until wrongdoers are held accountable. The Wharton paper states:
The public will need to "hold the perpetrators of the economic disaster responsible and take what actions they can to prevent them from harming the economy again." In addition, the public will have to see proof that government and business leaders can behave responsibly before they will trust them again. For more on the importance of trust in the economy, see this. The stakes are high. As Pam Martens, who worked on Wall Street for 21 years, writes:
The massive losses by big Wall Street firms, now topping those of the Great Depression in relative terms, have yet to be adequately explained. Wall Street power players are obfuscating and Congress is too embarrassed or frightened to ask, preferring to just throw money at the problem and hope it goes away. But as job losses and foreclosures mount and pensions and 401(k)s shrink, public policy measures to address the economic stresses require a full set of unembellished facts.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
The second article is by Robert Scheer on Huffington Post, and talks about 'how' this epic fraud is playing out around President Obama:
Barack Obama and the Democrats he led to a stunning victory two years ago are going down hard in the face of an economic crisis that he did nothing to create but which he has failed to solve. That is somewhat unfair because the basic blame belongs to his predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who let the bulls of Wall Street run wild in the streets where ordinary folks lived. And there was universal Republican support in Congress for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that produced this debacle.
The core issue for the economy is the continued cost of a housing bubble made possible only after what Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers back then trumpeted as necessary "legal certainty" was provided to derivative packages made up of suspect Alt-A and subprime mortgages. It was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Senate Republican Phil Gramm drafted and which Clinton signed into law, that made legal the trafficking in packages of dubious home mortgages. In any decent society the creation of such untenable mortgages and the securitization of risk irrationally associated with it would have been judged a criminal scam. But no such judgment was possible because thanks to Wall Street's sway under Clinton and Bush the bankers got to rewrite the laws to sanction their treachery.
It is Obama's continued deference to the sensibilities of the financiers and his relative indifference to the suffering of ordinary people that threaten his legacy, not to mention the nation's economic well-being. There have been more than 300,000 foreclosure filings every single month that Obama has been president, and as The New York Times editorialized, "Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the Obama administration's efforts to address the foreclosure problem will make an appreciable dent." The Times noted that the administration's main program has been a bust, with only $321 million of the $30 billion allocated to the program having been spent to help folks stay in their homes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
This one sentence, just about points to exactly 'who and what' we have become as a nation:
In any decent society the creation of such untenable mortgages and the securitization of risk irrationally associated with it would have been judged a criminal scam.
We in fact, are no longer a decent society, we are now a nation where it is perfectly 'legal' to steal 'if' you are one of the elite insiders who can get away with fraud by being bought off by those very same crooks, thieves and liars' who in fact, are fully responsible for the needless suffering of millions and millions of Americans.
I have noted that sooner or later, the Republicans (who are in fact just as fully responsible for the fraud and cover up and deregulation that led us into this national catastrophe) will indeed, find some way to 'turn the tables' on President Obama and make him the 'fall guy' in the next few years. I have absolutely no doubt, this is what is going to occur.
President Obama has some very tough choices to make, and if he continues with his current economic team, Geithner and Summers, and if he continues in his Neo-Fake Liberal Mode, and does the unthinkable:
Goes after our Social Security, (after all the other Fraud, Looting and Pillaging that is continuing), then, perhaps he honestly thinks somehow we had forgotten his prior statements, and his promises to protect Social Security:
That's why my alarm bells rang when a search in Google brought me a story in Slate, by Peter Bray, about the Obama campaign and Social Security, way back there on Sept 19, 2008. It said, "This week the Obama campaign modified his position on a sensitive issue, Social Security. Compare the current 'Seniors & Social Security' page with the previous version. Now, tell me, why, oh why, would the Obama campaign delete the following sentence: '[Obama] does not believe it is fair to hardworking seniors to raise the retirement age....The new page includes some reassuring language about 'work[ing] with members of Congress from both parties to strengthen Social Security and prevent privatization while protecting middle class families from tax increases and benefit cuts.' Still for those who pay attention to such things, what the new page leaves out is as important as what it puts in."
So far, Obama has not taken a position on raising the retirement age; and I don't know if he's been asked. Aides have indicated he's considering this. But such a proposal is anathema to most of Obama's supporters. Ruben Burke, an official of the labor-backed Alliance of Retired Americans said, "Can you imagine working until 70? In physically demanding jobs like construction, manufacturing and the service sector, I just don't see how you can. And in a tough job market who would hire someone in their late 60s? Raising the retirement age is a benefit cut-plain and simple. We cannot allow it to be done."
Social Security is keeping 20 million older and disabled Americans and over a million children out of poverty. Polls report that 77 percent of Americans an 68 percent of Republicans believe that Washington should find other ways, rather than Social Security, to reduce the deficit. And AARP's survey shows strong majorities would prefer that their payroll taxes are raised rather than see benefits cuts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The extremism that is now in our political body has always been there, lurking, but as our government (and it doesn't make any difference to me what party is doing it) continues to double down and take, and take and take, while hiding the corruption and fraud, then fully expect the 'extremism' to just get worse as times goes by.
The 'political moral hazard' of running as fast as you can away from what has really happened in our nation, is going to eventually catch up to our own President, because these were in fact his choices, and the consequences of those choices will come back to haunt our nation over and over again, as we slip into a third world nation.
Tell everyone you know about the movie "Inside Job." It was a huge success at the Cannes Film Festival, and it is about time that we as a people faced up to just how and why we are in the mess we are in...it was not an accident, and the longer we cover it all up, the longer we will be paying for that in the end.
Thanks as always.