Last night I watched the film "Margin Call" quite by accident, without a plan to coordinate with the 1st anniversary of Qccupy Wall Street. My friends, there's monkey business going on on Wall Street just in case you don't know, and I'm sad to say that a good many people I talk to do not know. I learned nothing really new from the movie, but it was still a shocker. Real people make decisions to screw other real people, and when the house of cards is about to crash down, real people do what they must to save their asses at the expense of other real people.
Not a few of those who survived the fall of the house of cards, the
survival of the fittest of the buyers and sellers of the junk mortgage
bundles, often came out of the crash with huge salaries and bonuses paid
for by you and me with our tax money. Shocking, incredible? Yes, but that's the way it went.
From the film review in the New York Times:
If no one in this world is patently evil, no one is innocent either. A young risk analyst named Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) may be as close as the movie comes to a hero, but it is also possible to see what happens to him as a parable of how the system corrupts and exploits its most decent and honest minions. Working late one night Peter (who we later learn has a Ph.D. in physics) glimpses a sign of the apocalypse lurking in a mathematical model. Recent volatility in the market is threatening the stability of the mortgage-based securities that have been generating most of the company’s profits, and the resulting losses are likely to swallow this bank and make trillions of dollars vanish into thin air.
What follows Peter's discovery seems inevitable.
The most chilling and most believable aspect of “Margin Call”
is how calmly and swiftly its drama of damage control unfolds. A
scapegoat must be found, and a survival plan worked out. The
consequences are acknowledged — those we are living with now — and then
coldly accepted in the name of a vaporous greater good. “We have no
choice.” “There is no choice.” “It’s not like we have a choice.” These
phrases are uttered again and again, by people who truly believe what
they are saying.
So, on it goes, business as usual, with not much evidence of change even as the major recession has not yet run its course.
Some say Occupy Wall Street is weakened or even dying. Occupy (or something like it) is not dead. Don't
forget that throughout the world, there are many more have-nots than
there are haves. The movement to bring about a greater measure of equality, the struggle of the have-nots and
those who sympathize with them to stand against the haves will continue.
Movements can take decades to produce results. Yes, it's discouraging that change does not come more quickly. Most people in the US are not yet ready to take real risks to bring about change, but it's a mistake to think
the movement is dead.
Dozens of arrests were reported on Monday, the first anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, as protesters converged near the New York Stock Exchange and tried to block access to the exchange.
Police
officers and protesters squared off at various points on the blocks
near the Stock Exchange. At various points protesters tried to block
sidewalks leading to the Stock Exchange, but were dispersed by the
police. Officers had set up barricades on several streets leading to the
exchange and were asking identification from workers seeking to gain
access.
Why are people being arrested? Why are people walking on public streets required to show IDs?
Today the Council of Elders
release their Greensboro Declaration. The Council of Elders encourages
faith communities to unite on the weekend of September 30 and, in their
own sacred spaces, use this declaration as a basis for faith
discussion. 