I saw Inside Job, the documentary about the housing bubble crash, and it was scarier than any horror movie. I went with my friend and her brother, who is visiting, and we had a great time, with my husband joining us for dinner. It's exciting to meet someone I've heard so much about for many years. And the dinner eased away the feelings that arose in me from the movie, until my husband later asked me if the film had upset me, and I realized the movie had dampened my mood, and I'd had a bit of a struggle to chat and socialize. Most of the information I already knew, so I think it was really about seeing these people interviewed and watching their utter lack of guilt or sense of responsibility.
The new part for me was how academics supplement their salaries with consulting fees from financial institutions, and then consult our government - without any awareness that they have a huge conflict of interest and ethical responsibilities to the people they teach and advise. It is horrific. So economics seems to be the study of how to accumulate wealth at the expense of whomever gets in the way. There is no morality. They are in fact insistent that there is no conflict.
But most depressing of all is that Obama's advisors are all the same people who declined to admit there was a crash coming, and reassured the American people that all was secure. They should all be in jail, but instead, they are at the helm of the current administration as well. In some third world countries, they might actually have been prosecuted, but not here. Here they are lionized and paid enormous sums of money for past failures. And we are ruining the lives of people in other countries by our recklessness. I am so ashamed.
Let's face it, this is gambling, these people are addicted, and they do nothing but harm, because our country has no restrictions on their behavior. And there are no consequences for them, just for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment