Inside Job

‘Where there’s a will there’s a way. And where there’s no will, there’ll never be a way.

Such was the conclusion to be had after seeing this powerful film/documentary about the provenance of the global economic crisis.

The Film

The narrative was presented in a series of short, cameo-style interviews with the main players in the crises (culprits) who denied repeatedly their culpability and were unable to admit  but a modicum of reckless behaviour. It was a staggering expose of a world gone mad, of  testosterone wreaking havoc on a public naïve enough to think that they too could have the trappings everyone else seemed to be enjoying. To quote George Bush in a speech some time before the first derivative domino was pushed, ‘even those on modest incomes could now afford to have a nice house (if not 5 private jets, and two helicopters, owned, we learned by one of the directors of a well known financial organisation)

Crap Loans

Little did anyone know that sub- prime or not, it suited the biggest players to dish out those dodgy deals (crap loans, the revealed in-house terminology) – the dodgier the better, so they could multiply the benefits of a wager on the negative outcome – the  default setting (no pun itended) that many (though not all) could see was the only possible outcome for agreements that, in former, saner times would have not been worth the paper on which they were written.

We learnt, surprisingly, about academic economists and business teachers in some of the most prestigious US universities reaping rewards not too far removed from the bonuses of the bankers who were paying them…… to perpetuate,  rationalise and promote financial, economically unsustainable manoeuvres. To the rest of civilised life such theoretical economies of scale and return would have seemed absurd, distressing, deeply anti social and, in the normal way of things, criminal.

Tented communities

Indeed, it was the human cost of the crisis that brought home just how ruthless, stupid and above all greedy behaviour can destroy humanity and make a mockery of relative values. A crises for those on a modest income presents a narrative profile very different from  those on a  six and seven figure compensation package. It’s a  strange alchemy that allows  risky loans to  boost the profits of a lender on the one hand (morally ruthless) yet renders the recipient, homeless, on the other (morally unacceptable), those that had been bitten by the get rich quick bug only to find themselves in poverty just a little less quickly with no roof over their heads, but one must hope, a relatively high grade of canvas equal to the task of protecting the urbn camper; its as if a mad despot had got hold of a quadratic equation, tried to solve it in a fairground mirror and when,  this treatment fails to provide the answer in his chosen direction, holds it to ransom: the saga becomes more  or less a song without words, (for no one could ever be composed enough to sing such a sad song), but a story for which words fail and a play  about the cumulative and perhaps inevitable  tyranny of the computer’s binary system, when most people who operate them were born into a world just recovering from the trials of base ten……

Wall Street Government

It’s chilling to realise that the US is really a Wall Street Govt. and that many of the arch –itects of the crises are still at the helm under Obama.. Perhaps this explains to some degree at least why change and reform in the banking sector has all the determination of a parent who given a choice or not to indict their errant children promises that their behaviour will ‘get better in the future – and aren’t all teenagers the same?’

Years to come

Why a financial engineer selling dreams and invisibles should be paid 300 times more than a real engineer (who makes touchable artifacts) must be a wonder of this brave new world –  in which the actions of so small a group globally speaking can create a nightmare that has devastated and will continue to cause devastation for years to come. The question we must all now ask is this: ‘has anything changed in the banking sector or, like the fashion victims amongst us, has the emperor just changed into his summer outfit?

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