Inside Job
We watched this documentary the other night and I'm convinced every American needs to see this. The clear lesson for me is that no one in a position of power or authority can or should be trusted -- in fact, it's best to assume that everyone will be tempted to use whatever power they have for their own benefit and many will actually do so. The Founding Fathers understood this and thus set up checks and balances in our branches of government. Economic conservatives the last several decades have been putting way too much faith in the "self-regulating" power of markets. What actually happens is that smart, selfish people abuse the free market to make themselves rich at the expense of others. This occurred in the Gilded age when big monopolies were employing American women and children in sweatshops and it's happening in the world of high finance today.