On the recommendation of a friend, I watched the HBO movie “Too Big to Fail”. All of us know something went down during the financial crisis (we were all affected in some way) but very few know what exactly occurred. The complexity of the financial system baffles even those who work in that sector, so what game are you and I?
To say that the movie is good is an understatement. It’s a revelation of how the economy works the effect of the falling dominoes, how the people we only hear of in papers and sometimes see on TV affect the very system that we are an integral part of. It not only explains succinctly what occurred but also the why. The gross mismanagement of companies, their endless tendencies towards risk and investing in securities and commodities they themselves knew very little about lends belief to the faith that they deserved what happened to them. But the movie also makes very clear why the government had to intervene – there was simply no other choice. We have seen the scale of devastation that is taking place despite massive and timely government intervention. All of us know someone who lost their job and perhaps is still unemployed even though officially the recession ended in 2009. I shudder to imagine what would have happened had there been no help from the authorities. Timely injection of money into the system helped, as much as we don’t like to see tax payer money go down the tubes, I must say it helped.
However, at the offset, during the final stages of the Bush administration, the bank bailout of $125 billion was simply transferred to the executives. Despite a teetering economy, golden parachutes weren’t cut for senior executives on Wall Street, they still made massive amounts of money and the year of the bail out alone, executives made a whopping $135 billion in bonuses. So much for the stimulus!
I recommend everyone watch this movie, to better understand the intricacies of the financial system and of the nation’s politics. It’s a clear picture of how bad things can get if business as usual is allowed to continue and no one cares to even learn what they are investing in.
So all this talk about the movie got me so intrigued I started reading the book the movie is based on. The book, same name, Too Big to Fail, is written by Andrew Ross Sorkin, a reporter for the NY Times. It’s a Bible, a mammoth reading that lures you into its human style of characters. These executives, we only know their names, but Sorkin brings them to life. He describes their background and how they rose to their current positions. Then he starts to talk about the downfall. So far, I’ve read about Bernanke, Paulson, Dimon (Chase), Fuld (Lehman) Geithner and realized that the one thing common to all of them is ambition and the desire to succeed. They set off to change the world without even knowing they were doing so, simply following their instinct to achieve. Some, as history now shows us, were more successful than others but most rose from humble beginnings.
The story has renewed motivation in me. It’s reminding me that regardless of where you come from, if you want to leave your mark on this world, you can! You simply need the desire. Anyone can be successful, if you dare to.
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