Movie Review of “INSIDE JOB” “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man 's needs, but not every man 's greed,” said Mahatma Gandhi and this is somewhat the crux of this movie. Inside Job is directed by Charles Ferguson, and it highlights the reasons and the consequences of the global financial crisis of 2008. This movie is basically related to recession that was caused by the inefficiency of the industry and the unfavourable banking practices. The director has conducted several interviews and has exposed some hidden realities. The movie clearly shows that this crisis was not accidental, and that there were many people, including regulators, politicians, businessmen, who were actively involved in this destruction. These people and large …show more content…
Every person asking for loan was treated equally and was given the loan. So basically these were the riskiest loans and investments made. Along with this the rating agencies were paid heavy amounts by investment banks in order to get the CDOs highly rated and this was the main problem actually. Everyone was satisfied that it is highly rated so it is safe. Other banks kept on purchasing these CDOs due to this reason. All this lead to huge mortgages all around and therefore housing prices increased dramatically creating a bubble. According to experts this was not real money it was just being created by the system. Leverage ratios were increasing. It is the ratio of bank’s borrowed money and its own money. As borrowings were far more than their own money that is why leverage ratios were high and asset base was decreasing dramatically. AIG, an insurance company was selling huge amounts of derivatives for CDO owners. It was an insurance policy that if CDO goes wrong AIG will pay the loss to the investors. AIG did this because it was so sure that nothing can go wrong as almost all CDOs are rated AAA and along with this it will get premium from the investors. But AIG’s anticipation was wrong, when all CDOs went bad it faced losses. AIG also involved speculators which resulted in even large losses. People were unable to pay back their loans and therefore the whole system collapsed
Additionally, when America’s economy was melting in 2008, the Federal Reserve played a big role to stabilize it. Besides the Great Depression during the years 1929 through 1939 the worst economic time for the United States, 2008 was unmistakable one of the worst years of America’s economy history. When this economic recession was taking place, the Fed had to take action to avoid another depression and to stop a fall from the financial system. With the help of the Federal Reserve J.P. Morgan Chase and Co.’s they planned to help Bear Stearns (an investment bank) with financial assistance to help the government to buyout AIG, a well-known insurance company. This helped to produce a strategy targeting to stabilize the credit market and also the short-term interest rate from 45% to almost 0 from the benchmark (Coste). Thanks to the Federal Reserve and their well design plan to avoid another recession they prevented the economy of the world or better known as Macroeconomic system from falling and getting it
These actions led to the fall in prices of securities. Loans were liquidated and borrowing from banks and other lenders became difficult. Interest rates would rise rapidly and sharply. This type of financial hardship led to the liquidation of bank credit. Over a long enough span, this liquidation would lead to money crises (Federal Reserve System 5th ed pp. 10-11).
This means banks “…must quickly liquidate loans and sell its assets (often at rock-bottom prices) to come up with the necessary cash, and the losses they suffer can threaten the bank’s solvency.” The next factor was unemployment. Many people lost their life-saving in investment. With the lack of fund, many stop spending and saved with
Because of this downfall of the housing market, the U.S. economy fell along with other markets across the country. Homeowners had mortgages higher than what their homes were valued at, the decline in housing prices caused many people to default on their mortgages which caused the values of mortgage backed securities and CDO’s to collapse, leaving banks and their financial institutions holding those securities with a lower value of
Real estate values further rose, luring lenders into taking more risks in their financial transactions. All this was done in the hope of raking in huge sums of dollars since the prices of the mortgages had gone up. Consequently, a large number of people, including those who would not have qualified under normal conditions, were able to secure mortgages. They soon realized that they had blundered but it was too late. Due to increased supply of homes being disposed off by lenders and other financial institutions, the demand went down sharply. There was no more money flowing in the economy as many people now stopped taking the mortgages. This could have resulted into the mortgage crisis.
Many people lost as much as ten times their initial investment, which shook consumer confidence. In an effort to cover their margins, people rushed the banks in masses, demanding their money. Soon, banks began to run out of cash and went bust.
caused all the money to disappear, which caused the banks to try to pay the money back which
Debt this high drove all crediting to collapse because people could not make payments on their loans, due to the fact that they simply did not have the income to pay. This then created instability within the banks because the revenue necessary to continue was no longer there. All of things added together equated to the largest market crash since the great depression and governments intervention.
The enormous amount of unsecured consumer debt created by this speculation left the stock market essentially off-balance. Many investors, caught up in the race to make a killing, invested their life savings, mortgaged their homes, and cashed in
Both the company was providing loans at the lower rates which are against the regulations. The effect was they were bankrupt and there was misutilization of the investor’s money and taxpayer’s money. In the year 2010, the company held huge amount of mortgages which is more than 50% of the America’s mortgages. The effect is that they have sanctioned the loans without following the regulations and the result was that that they were bankrupt and government supported them huge amount of money and other incentives.
The lack of money became so bad in the US, UK, and Ireland, that the government had to bail them out. the realization of all this by the public lead to a complete loss of confidence by consumers and investors all around, this lead to less spending and investing. all this lead up to something called a credit crunch. a credit crunch is a sudden shortage of funds for lending. the credit crunch was driven by the bad handling of loans on mortgages that led to a rise in defaults and sub prime mortgages. these mortgages were in america, but the downturn was able to spread throughout the entire globe. people with poor income and poor credit were getting huge loans for mortgages that they werent able to pay back. a cause for this was probably due to the huge incentive for mortgage brokers to sell mortgages at high prices because that's how they got paid, and that played a huge roll in the rise of mortgage defaults. mortgage broker borrowed money to be able to lend mortgage, the lending was not financed out of savings accounts. for many of these mortgages, there was a 1 to 2 year period of low interest rates, at the end of these periods, interest rates rose dramatically, not allowing people to afford the mortgage
CDSs are used as an insurance against the possibility that the borrower could not repay his or her loan. In such case the issuer has to pay a specified sum to the buyer. Of course they are sold for a premium and if no credit events occur, the issuer makes profit. After the subprime mortgage crisis began, and many borrowers started defaulting on their loans, the pressure on the companies that had issued CDSs was rising. There were companies that simply did not have enough money to repay everything they owed. A famous example is AIG. The subprime mortgage crisis and the bankruptcy of big financial companies, like Lehman Brothers, meant that AIG had to pay much more money that it expected and made the company insolvent. The company itself had AAA rating shortly before this. This made the investors confident that even their high-rating investments failed, the insurer would certainly be able to repay them. A bailout from the US government followed. Generally, the issuers of these instruments can be held accountable for issuing them, without the ability to pay what they had to, when the credit events occurred. Of course many of them were mislead by the credit rating agencies and the overall conviction in the market that it was not as risky as it actually was. Many people argue that such instruments need to be regulated much better. They can create clear conflict of interests. For example, a
What caused the financial crisis to happen? The origin of the crisis, the film argues, can be traced back to the 1980s, when the process of deregulation was eagerly implemented under the Reagan Era. Prior to the emergence of Reaganomics, the financial industry was tightly regulated following the Great Depression. Most of the banks were local and were prohibited from speculating customers’ deposits (brought by the Glass-Steagall Act), while the investment banks were modest and private. However, everything changed after 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president and the U.S economy entered a thirty-year phase of deregulation. Financial institutions, which included commercial and investment banks then embarked on the process of maximizing profit by making risky investments with the depositors’ money. By the end of the decade, saving and loans companies went bankrupt, causing tax payers to lose more than one hundred billion dollars. However, the government did not implement any reform and deregulation continued to take place under the Clinton
The Global Financial Crisis, also known as The Great Recession, broke out in the United States of America in the middle of 2007 and continued on until 2008. There were many factors that contributed to the cause of The Global Financial Crisis and many effects that emerged, because the impact it had on the financial system. The Global Financial Crisis started because of house market crash in 2007. There were many factors that contributed to the housing market crash in 2007. These factors included: subprime mortgages, the housing bubble, and government policies and regulations. The factors were a result of poor financial investments and high risk gambling, which slumped down interest rates and price of many assets. Government policies and regulations were made in order to attempt to solve the crises that emerged; instead the government policies made backfired and escalated the problem even further.
The new lackadaisical lending requirements and low interest rates drove housing prices higher, which only made the mortgage backed securities and CDOs seem like an even better investment. Now consider the housing market which had become a housing bubble, which had now burst, and now people could not pay for their incredibly expensive houses or keep up with their ballooning mortgage payments. Borrowers started defaulting, which put more houses back on the market for sale. But there were not any buyers. Supply was up, demand was down, and home prices started collapsing. As prices fell, some borrowers suddenly had a mortgage for way more than their home was currently worth and some stopped paying. That led to more defaults, pushing prices down further. As this was happening, the big financial institutions stopped buying sub-prime mortgages and sub-prime lenders were getting stuck with bad loans. By 2007, some big lenders had declared bankruptcy. The problems spread to the big investors, who had poured money into the mortgage backed securities and CDOs. They started losing money on their investments. All these of these financial instruments resulted in an incredibly complicated web of assets, liabilities, and risks. So that when things went bad, they went bad for the entire financial system. Some major financial players declared bankruptcy and others were forced into mergers, or needed