The Inside Job
Watching the movie the Inside Job is depressing. It is depressing because it is the truth. I do not know whether the movie will change the opinion of the American people about the country. I hope it does. The American economic policy makers who include politicians, academics and business leaders are very inadequate and corrupt. This is because they only work to enrich themselves. They would deny any fault or wrongdoing if confronted and they only work to propagate the corrupt system because they themselves are the system (Heidenheimer & Johnston, 2002). That is why they derailed bank reforms and shifted the focus of debate to be on national debt so that they can protect their own interests. By imposing austerity on American citizens, they were trying to avoid the consequences of their corrupt actions. They work together and give us meaningless lectures on how we need to be tough for us to overcome the financial crisis we are in. working together is just a ploy to protect themselves (Baker, 2005). People around the world are suffering loss of wealth and income because of the ability of these people to impose their agendas on us. Yet it is the common citizen who suffers the consequences of their bad agendas while they themselves do not suffer at all. The still have their jobs and still dictate how the national wealth should be divided.
America is not the way it was before. Its political system is highly corrupted. Rich individuals and companies impose their opinions and views just because they have huge spending capabilities. The rest of us, though we object their views, are forced to keep quiet because of our low financial bases. To make matters, we can not place our faith in the judiciary because the Supreme Court judges are also corrupted by these rich individuals (Girling, 1997). The whole system, from the judiciary, the academic fraternity and the business class is composed of corrupt and incompetent individuals. This makes the whole issue a mockery of democracy and capitalism, but especially democracy.
America has become a place where politicians have learned to use fantasy. They make unrealistic promises and give unrealistic views and solutions. The end product is to have a society based on illusion and not fact based narrative. Politicians have gradually succeeded in kicking away reality. They have succeeded in persuading the regular citizens to vote for the politicians’ own selfish interests and against their own interests (Heidenheimer & Johnston, 2002). They have caused the country to decline economically. And they have redirected the wealth of the nation into their own pockets. This led to the financial crisis facing the world economies (Bishop, 2000). Sadly, the crisis did not affect them at all. It is the common people who were hurt. They are the ones who caused the mess yet the mess is left for us to clean. And yet we agree to do it. But why? It is because we are told that we have to sacrifice for our nation. That the nation is frail and we must be ready to sacrifice for our beloved country. We are told that this is happening all over the world. We are told that it is the system and nobody has control over it. That what we are experiencing is determined by natural forces which we have little control over. We have to suffer the consequences. We have to accept lower wages. We must give up on pensions. Yet all these are not the work of natural forces. They are a result of our greedy and corrupt leaders.
Corruption stinks yet it is there in our society. Lack of ethics smells yet it persists in our institutions. It has to a point where the economics profession also lacks ethics. We can live in the consolation that market forces will enforce some form of ethics and therefore economists do not require to have ethics. But when, as a profession, you sink to such depths of shame that ethics means nothing, then we have to realize that we are hanging on a dangerous balance. This is when we cease to have humanity (Duncan, 2009). That is when madness sets in. all these sentiments come from my watching the movie. My harsh statements are as a result of the ugly truth the movie tells. The movie reveals just how America has veered off from its original course that was leading to prosperity.
It tells just how hard it will be to regain our original status as a nation. It shows just how hard it is to regain the balanced and less unequal state we had before. And economics isn’t helping. Many of our distinguished economists are unwilling to help revive our democracy. This is because they are in the same plot that destroyed our economy. Capitalism and democracy are in conflict (Girling, 1997). One protects the weak while other exploits the weak. The one that protects gives power to the weak while the one that exploits gives power to the wealthy. I do not advocate for democracy or capitalism. Either can be harmful in extreme. What is required is a balance. And when one watches the Inside Job, he/she is reminded of how far we are from the balance. Right now, we have too much capitalism and little democracy. And this too much capitalism has brought too much corruption and deficiency of ethics. This needs to change.
Bibliography
Baker, R. W. (2005). Capitalism's Achilles heel dirty money and how to renew the free-market system. Hoboken, N.J., John Wiley & Sons
Bishop, J. D. (2000). Ethics and capitalism. Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
Duncan, R. (2009). The corruption of capitalism: a strategy to rebalance the global economy and restore sustainable growth. Hong Kong, China, CLSA Books
Girling, J. L. S. (1997). Corruption, capitalism and democracy. London, Routledge
Heidenheimer, A. J., & Johnston, M. (2002). Political corruption concepts & contexts. New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction Publishers.
