Interesting how the world has changed, and lessons we need to learn

Dear James, Daniel and Emily,

Friday I went to see Wall Street: Money Never sleeps, and then after dinner I watched Rising Sun.  And what struck me, thinking back to the original Wall Street movie and Rising Sun, was how much the world had changed, and more importantly how bad the crash really was in 2008, and how did we as a country let things get to the point where businesses could effectively destroy the economy.

Watching Rising Sun I was struck with how terrified we were on some level of the powerful Japanese economy.  While the book and the movie were over the top, there was a real fear there.  Partially driven by good old fashioned American Nativism.  And also driven by a fear of a changing economic landscape.  Our economy was undergoing a real change at that time, and the 'average' person was really worried where and how they would fit in. 

The other thing that struck me was how mild a danger the 'bad guys' in the movie really represented.  At worst they might have taken over some companies, and then run them more efficiently.  Which might have meant some layoffs, but not economic takeover or ruin.  And then how little we really had to fear from the big bad Japanese, when their own real estate bubble hit them like ours is hitting us now.

Thinking about the 2 Wall Street films I was struck by the fact that again the 'bad guy' in the first film might at worst have done some insider trading, and maybe cleared out some older inefficient companies.  While I wouldn't have called them 'vicitimless' crimes, they certainly weren't damaging to the economy as a whole.  And what passed as a 'Master of the Universe' at that time, in the late 80's would today be laughed at as a middle class minor league trader by today's big traders. 

But in this latest film we see just how big these traders were, how much money they were throwing around.  And how big of an effect they had on the world and nations economy.  And that was the part that really irritated me and made me angry.  There were a few scenes of the movie that made me think of the line from Taxi Driver:

Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

Only in this case, the scum isn't some street people, it's these greedy uber powerful rich people.  There were some interesting side stories in the movie, the best being the main characters Mom, a former nurse turned wanna be real estate mogul.  Who is so focused on the big score, and leveraged to the hilt and beyond, that she's like a degenerate gambler who just knows that if she can get enough of a stake she can win big, and then maybe she can stop, only the reality is she won't, not until she hits rock bottom, which is what the crash did.  Which in a lot of ways was an apt metaphor for our economy.

But the last, biggest lesson I took from the movie was how much our lack of regulation of the financial industry led to the crash.  While the crash cannot be blamed on 1 person or organization there was a definite case of the foxes ruling the hen house.  The big financial companies and banks were making massive, obscene amounts of money gambling with money that to some extent didn't really exist, but in the end was really our money.  And then when things fell apart we had to bail them out.  But then these same companies and financial leaders now have the gall to get upset when the government tries to reign them in to some extent with regulations.  Bottom line, this crash was the fault of a body politic that has made the mistake of thinking that we could trust people who make really obscene amounts of money to not be so greedy that they won't gamble the house trying to get more.