The Inside Job : Storyville

This documentary was about the global economic crisis of 2008. It begins by examining how Iceland was highly deregulated in 2000 and the privatization of its banks. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and AIG collapsed, Iceland and the rest of the world went into a global recession. 

I found it overwhelming how selfish and corrupt the banking and political organizations in the United States were back in 2008. Very respected and trustworthy members of Wall street took advantage of their situation as being influential in the economic market and scammed many Americans into billions of dollars so they could take the money for themselves and treat themselves to multi million pound yachts, jets houses etc. This had a huge multiplier effect on the economy and resulting into a worldwide recession. Unfortunately, this left countries in up to $20 trillion worth of debt which I believe is an absolute disgrace as the poorer countries could not handle there circumstances.

The blame of this crisis is put down to the deregulation of Iceland back in the early 2000's. Deregulation is the removal of regulations or restrictions, especially in a particular industry which in this case was were financial institution such as banks and geothermal energy companies. In my opinion Iceland did not need to apply deregulation as it was a stable democracy with a high standard of living. The government privatised Iceland's 3 largest banks and finance took over and 'wrecked' Iceland as they managed to borrow 120 Billion dollars that they spent on own personal gain. The financial institutions took advantage of this situation and started fixing things that would favour them.  This then caused corruption within the public causing protest and upset resulting in Iceland facing a downhill spiral. In my opinion I'm disappointed that Iceland could screw over there own people the way they did as banks are supposed to be trustworthy when holding your earnings but once the banks collapsed and went bust a lot of people lost there whole life savings.


Now I will explain how Wall Street were involved, The term Wall Street is used as a collective name for the financial and investment community, which includes stock exchanges and large banks, brokerages, securities and underwriting firms, and big businesses. This is how they can have such a large influence because they control so many different financial markets. This documentary showed me how selfish and addicted to money people can become. This was aligned with banks who were taking huge risks who evidently could not afford to take and this is why it ended in such a disaster. As a quick summary 4 of the largest banks in America and several insurance companies allied with each other to deregulate loan company allowing them to invest depositors money. They seen this as a gap in the market, they took advantage of public losses for there own personal gains.
The corruption started in 1981 by large companies such as Merrel Lynch. By the end of the 1980's hundreds of saving in loan company's had failed, people were sentenced to jail in these corporations but also some were adopted by presidency and are still there today, so it's very clear to me where the problem lies... and it makes me feel as if the problem has not been solved. It shows these big leaders such as CEO's of big corporations and even political figures care more about themselves. When it all goes down hill it doesn't cross my mind for two seconds that they care about the peoples money they risk!

They're were many documents and statements made by very reliable sources throughout the years that were dismissed and not even got a second look at which were all warning signs of the corruption that was happening. For example in 2005 the chief economist of IMF wrote how firms are not acting as normal and taking far too much risk which will highly result in them destroying there companies. Also the FBI were highly alerted about fraud in mortgage companies, reported in inflated appraisal. They argued they looked into these cases but people thought this was nonsense and I can only but feel they were brainwashed and turning a blind eye to these cases.

The reality of this is, the people who suffered the most were genuine members of society who lost life earnings when they couldn't even protect themselves from the horror these greedy so called 'leaders' and 'traders' put them in, by outright scamming them for own personal gain by taking they're money and risking it all on the very slight chance it would return. I have gathered there is too much political power in America over ruling the public.