The Documentary Inside Job Is On Vimeo

Since the documentary Inside Job  has been up for a year on Vimeo, I’m assuming copyright has been cleared.  But, as always, do your own diligence.  I take no legal responsibility for Vimeo’s content management or copyright policies.   

I have talked about a handful of documentaries on here.  Inside Job is one of them.  It is a must watch.  It is excellent at exposing the systemic culture of fraud and incompetence in Europe and the U.S. 

It’s been a few years since I watched Inside Job but one thing I noticed is the high standard of living for all citizens in Iceland.  I believe they even talk about free college education, national health care, etc.   Well, if not, they have it and more.  It is a culture of self-rule that embraces dignity for their citizens.   In fact, in my travels, I have found that every democracy in the civilized world has a standard of living higher than the U.S.  In some ways, this crisis and all of the outcomes we see around the world are some attempt to export American and British economic and social values to the rest of the world.  Or, for politicians in other countries to import American and British economic and social values.  You pick.  There is plenty of political fraud outside of the U.S.  But American economic hegemony that allows this dynamic to take place is obviously accomplished primarily through the dollar; the world’s reserve currency.  For now. 

I have seen a few prominent examples of propaganda recently that the decline in the U.S. is a myth.  Or that we have seen a full fledged recovery.  Well, compare Iceland with what were once reasonably wealthy neighborhoods as far as the eye could see in the U.S.   Over the last thirty years we have witnessed ever-growing decay in our centers of industry.  Now, drive through Detroit or Cleveland, as examples, and you’ll drive for miles and miles and see neighborhoods that look like war zones.   That is repeated tens and tens and tens of thousands of times in communities across this nation where there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of now empty factories and business complexes. 

There is no decline in American ingenuity, industriousness or creativity.  But the decline is indeed real.  It’s in the decline of the political class and the corporate class.  It is the cesspool of corruption that defines our politics and corporations who work together to exploit our society for their own personal looting.   

I thought I would include this comparative to Iceland and the U.S. as an introduction to my next post.