Friday, November 25, 2011

Capitalism: A love story

By micheal moore

Emotional & informative story on the 2008 financial meltdown. Moore introduced the issue by relating how this meltdown is related to his personal life. He tells it from a layman view and with a sense of humour along the way.


The Inside Job

By Charles Ferguson

Freguson depicts the crisis in a more thrilling scene. I would describe it in a more serious tone on the meltdown. His facts were right on, and for non-economic lingo might take a while to digest. However his movie is still thrilling and exciting. He digs the details of how a single crack caused the dam to collapse on itself.

Both deploy the same message: derivatives, CDO, credit swap defaults & deregulation on banking industry

How free market based on the ideal principle of capitalism contributed to the great meltdown of 2008. All major banking industries originated from the US were only interested in making one thing and one thing only: profits. One of the movie described that a banking product is not like a production line; invention is a physical entity; regardless it is a hardware or software, something you can physically hold or something physically presence. A banking product is just a method of finding creative ways to make more money, and in this case the money they aimed for has been excessive and they wanted even more.

Somehow I sensed the same trend is happening in my workplace. In the induction camp they really emphasized it is more about work life balance; but then, on the performance appraisal side they frequently questioned on trivial items: who is the most tardy, who always lunch with the bosses, who smiles more, who stayed more.. There more important things than this if a corporation would to move forward.