Charles Ferguson Corrupts Powerless

Some say powerlessness corrupts because the powerlessness end up beaten and detached from society. However, Lord Acton, a learned personality of the nineteenth century, stated, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” His words claimed people with too much power would inevitably abuse their control. Although the powerlessness may be perceived as helpless and limited in control, power corrupts more because people of power are the source of the corruption. As catalysts, those of power do not have to choose faulty decisions, yet sometimes do with the knowledge of the consequences. Depicted by the documentary, The Inside Job, it is revealed that power corrupts more than powerlessness.

The Inside Job, written and directed by Charles Ferguson, revealed grave effects of power through the decisions made by the executives of large firms and the impact the decisions had on the general public. In the 1980s, the financial industry exploded, and investment banks went public, giving them huge amounts of stockholder money. There began a long period of financial deregulation which

Each of them were so large that their failure could threaten the whole system. Deregulation and advances in technology led to financial products called derivatives which were investment packages that economists and bankers claimed made markets safer. However, derivatives made markets unstable because bankers could gamble on virtually anything. The selling of derivatives fueled an economic bubble, and during the bubble, traders and CEOs became extremely wealth as annual bonuses spiked. However, the profits weren’t real income; they were money created by the system. Brokers who sold derivatives also actively bet against them at the same time they were telling customers that they were high-quality investments. Companies later made hundreds of millions of dollars while investors lost almost all of their