The title "Steal Yourself" already indicates the core content of the documentary: "misincentives" and "conflicts of interest" . Under the wrong incentive system, financial practitioners disregarded risks in order to satisfy their selfish desires, which eventually led to an unprecedented financial crisis. After the storm, the perpetrators retreated, and it was the innocent public who suffered the losses. At the same time, both regulation and academia are gradually being "captured" by powerful capital forces (regulatory capture, although the term is not directly used in the film), a large number of conflicts of interest and interest transfer, regulatory gaps in financial markets and well-known scholars' Endorsements have become an important driver of the financial crisis. From this perspective alone, the film is informative, rich in content and clear in logic, and interviews with a large number of practitioners, regulators and scholars who have been at the center of the crisis.
However, from a larger background, I still feel that my thirst is not quenched: the crisis in the CDO market and the real estate bubble have already begun to emerge, and the regulatory gap and financial crisis are completely blamed on the lobbying of interest groups and the capture of politics by capital power. And undisclosed conflict-of-interest deals don't feel like a satisfying answer. This seems to show a moralizing tendency, and the episode in the film about the chaotic private life of investment bank executives is a full manifestation of this point-is it possible to replace a group of people with integrity, honesty, nobility, and good personal life to engage in finance? Did it solve the problem? This is a systematic problem, and "guardianism" can only explain a part of the reason, even a relatively small part . But the film at least raises a lot of tough good questions: when America’s revolving door has become a channel for politics and capital to trade, when economists have been bought by interest groups without the public knowing, when White House House is jokingly called "Wall Street government" (in the words of an interviewer in the film). When financial intermediaries, such as rating agencies, who should be the gatekeepers of the financial market, have lost the most basic industry ethics, the financial market should Where to go?
From this point of view, the film's use of "self-defense" to explain how the financial crisis came about doesn't convince me, so it's actually the last part, "accountability," that strikes me the most. Many government officials, investment bank executives, and financial practitioners who in fact caused the crisis by themselves have not been punished, but have continued to hold important positions in the government or are still rich and well-earned. Those who really paid the price for the financial crisis were actually countless innocent ordinary people. So compared to the question of "how did the crisis happen", this film made me more interested in another question, namely "what to do after the crisis" . In the financial industry, where financial innovation and systemic risk are very subtle and only a tiny fraction apart, how to evaluate the behavior of practitioners and hold them accountable afterwards? For financial regulators, what accountability systems and metrics should be devised to judge whether they are being dutiful and neutral? After the crisis, how to balance and redistribute benefits so as to prevent ordinary investors from going bankrupt and those who are really responsible for paying the price?
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