Charles Ferguson

The director of the movie Charles Ferguson says the film is about "the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption.”(Youtube). In other words, this document based movie is based around the 2008 global financial meltdown that caused the United States economy to fall into a deep recession. The Plot of the the movie is split up into five parts, 1. How we got here, 2. The Bubble, 3. The Crisis, 4. Accountability, and 5. Where We are now. In part one they talk about ‘How We got Here’--what lead us into this crisis. They talk heavily of deregulations. These extensive regulations caused taxpayers hundreds of millions because of a saving and loan crisis. Furthermore the

This was a giant scam which caused homeowners no possibility to repay. This lead into part 2, ‘The Bubble’. With this triple A scam problems started to occur. Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs sold over 3 billion dollars with of CDO’s and bet against low value CDO’s by telling investors they were high quality. This is when the crisis hit. Part 3 of the movie ‘The Crisis’. The market for CDOs crashed and investment banks were left with billions of dollars worth of loans, which meant the CDO’s and real estate could not sell them. At this point the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which had been on the brink of collapse, and days later the Lehman Brothers had collapsed, which coincidently were double and triple A ratings. Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch, and Lehman went into bankruptcy which caused the collapse of the commercial paper market. The global financial system went paralyzed, and president George bush signed the Troubled Asset Relief Program, yet layoffs and foreclosures still continued. -- US foreclosed began to rise; Companies such as GM and chrysler faced bankruptcy at this time. Part Four of this documentary talks about Accountability. Who is supposed to be held accountable for