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I am but a naive outsider. I’m not alone. I gather that these are ingenious computer-driven trading schemes in which good money can be earned from bad debt, and Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe pocket untold millions at the same time they bankrupt their investors and their own companies. But I’m learning. I don’t fully understand the working of the “derivatives” and “credit swaps” that we have heard so much about in recent months.

I have a link below to a famous exchange seen on C-SPAN as Sen. These investments banks, and most of the other big Wall Street players, including Lehman and Bear, Stearns, continued to sell the bad mortgages to their clients as good investments. Carl Levin grilled Daniel Sparks, head of the Goldman, Sachs Mortgages Department, on why the company aggressively sold investments its own traders described to each other as “shitty.” It is entertaining to watch Sparks maintain a facade of studious probity as Levin socks him with the word “shitty” again and again.

Yes, the firm failed. This Wall Street climate meant the financial institutions were betting on their own clients to fail, and making money when they did. But it failed because of poisoned investments it hedged against, and paid its executives bonuses on the profits from those hedges. It helps to explain one session of Senate testimony I have been fascinated by for months: How Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers (photo at top) was able to defend the $484 million bonus he received after leading his firm into bankruptcy.

One of the most fascinating aspects of “Inside Job” involves the chatty on-camera insights of Kristin Davis (below), a Wall Street madam, who says the Street operated in a climate of abundant sex and cocaine for valued clients and the traders themselves. She’s not talking about a few naughty boys. She says it was an accepted part of the corporate culture, that hookers at $1,000 an hour and up, up, up were kept on retainer, that cocaine was the fuel, and that she and her girls didn’t understand how some traders could even function on the trading floor after most nights.

But it doesn’t block firms from trading on their own behalf. The Financial Reform Act of 2010, passed Thursday, is a step in the right direction. It has been called the most meaningful Wall Street legislation since the Great Depression. I would like to say the Obama Administration was in the forefront of that crucial reform, but it was not. There seems to be an unholy bipartisan alliance in favor of Wall Street greed.

It is easy to say Republicans oppose financial reform, because they do. Only four brave GOP Senators voted for the act. All current financial reform measures are taking place within a world infested with Wall Street lobbyists–four lobbyists to every member of Congress. But it’s too easy to say Democrats support it, although they do, because they stop short. In the area of financial reform, he is no more radical than Clinton and the two Bushes. It is amusing to hear the Tea Party describe Obama as a radical. If firms can still bet against their own clients, lesser measures amount to pissing on a forest fire.

When I first saw CASINO ROYALE a few years ago it seemed rather far-fetched to me that the villain was shown betting against the value of an airline which prototype he tried to have destroyed. Why would such a mechanism exist in Wall Street in the first place? I actually thought it had to be 100% movie fantasy.I’ve read about these cases lately and I still wonder why they were ever created to begin with, to what logical economic purpose.There has to be an answer.

It’s a casino–except the government doesn’t bail out Bally’s or Stardust of The MGM Grand should they go under. Thing is, they’re doing a lot of stuff that just plain damages the country, stuff that’s bad for the common welfare. Perhaps what our political vocabulary needs is an expansion of the word “anti-American.” Right now this term is popularly understood (sadly) as “anti-jingoism” or “anti-bumper sticker slogans” or “anti-Sarah Palin.” But the term would better be understood as “any assault on the common welfare of all those who are American.” These guys on Wall Street are still–even after all the suffering they’ve caused–regarded by many as agents of the American Dream (which is, of course, to make a big pile of money and climb on top of it and give everyone else the finger).

The current problem is too big to blame on one group of people, such as Wall Street or “shiftless homeowners.”. You are correct in your assessment Mr. At the same time I also agree with Mr. Ebert, I agree with you that Wall Street was irresponsible, out of touch and greedy. Cramer.

Banks should not have been encouraging individuals and families to enter into bad mortgages, but what about realtors who were taking these families into homes they knew were to outside of the family’s budget?. Government loosened up regulation on Wall Street, but it also loosened up the requirements for home ownership.

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