I believe it was last week, when I've got to see a movie called "Margin Call". I haven't seen any trailers of it, but once I've got a glimpse of the poster, I decided that was a movie I would love to see. I hoped it would be a movie about soemthing financial, but didn't have any information on it. Sure, from the poster shown at the movie theatre it could have been an accion movie about snitching drugs or something like that, so imagine how delighted I was when the movie turned to be exactly and entirely about the financial world, and it included some of my favorite actors (Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci), in a cast composition that blew me away!
Quirk of mine or a professional hazard, I really, really love financial or economics themed movies and stories. This in particular - which was about a unnamed bank realizing that they have pushed the envelop too far and toxic mortgages were about to explode in their face - had quite a strong message in many levels.
The movie inspired me to write particularly about the topic of financial responsability, but as there was the topic about the whiners, the topics started to collide, one thing pulling to the other, forming relationships and making sense into another topic, and made me (re)wake up to the fact that financial issues and whining feed on each other (too).
If you recall the last financial crisis (not the Greece or the Italian debacle, but more like the implosion that erased Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae from the face of the Earth), the one that forced the American Government to issue a $1 trillion bailout for banks, it started crumbling at the banking system due to very risky mortgages that were traded around in big bulks, much like a hot potato and generating a lot of money that had no sustance, nor any back up or support other than especulation and a crazy hunger to get money for nothing. This situation had many faces, but the one that got most of the attention was the banking sector, the brokers and the big account excecutives with the huge, juicy paychecks and bonuses.
The movie touches this topic as well, making an interesting point out of highlighting how much money some of these big heads get, how deep they are in the heart of the mess that pulls the whole system down, and yet, how in the order to cut costs to try and get the train back on the rails, they cut the heads of people who make much less than they do, do much more than what they do, weaken the company, weaken the system, but try to save their big slice of the cake. Really, do you want to cut on costs, so you fire 60 people who make under $100 K a year, and yet you keep the fat cats that work less, spend more company dime AND earn $40 million a year? I don't know what kind of economics they studied - if they studied any - but that doesn't add up. But why do they do it? For greed, endless, bottomless greed.
In this circle being "smart" isn't about being conscious, about using your knowledge to make something good, make something better, but about how can you make more money and get away with murder. But why do we allow it? Here comes the second element of the equation. We allow it, because many of us also want to be them, make that much money, whatever the cost.
Just think about it: if someone offers you $60 million, do you take it or do you leave it? How many of you would take the money? How many would ask "why?"?, How many would ask "what for?"? How many of you would actually question why the money is given, on what account, and how many of you would just ask "really?" or look for hidden traps? However, how many of you would ask themselves "and what could I do with that money?"?
As it has been noticed, there's plenty of people who whine on a professional level, and people chronically depressed and unhappy. The reasons are many and as different as people themselves, but it seems that today wherever you go you are surrounded by unhappy people. This much sadness can bring you down as well, but you don't need to let this happen. However, as it happens, unhappiness and unfulfillment are a key part of the system that allows these big executives get their big paychecks. Don't believe me? Just take a look at what's going around you. You are told that you are unatractive, that you need to change your body, make it thinner. The bar currently is set so high the actual models are being photoshopped to meet the new requirements. This will send you spending loads of money on fat burning pills and all sorts of equipment, gyms and reducing clothes you don't really need, and that will only make you feel worse about yourself, like a failure, which will generate more and more needs, for which you will be systematically convinced that you need to spend your hard earned money to "fix".
You are constantly told that your clothes are not good enough if they are not of a given brand, that your bag isn't good enough if it didn't cost you $2000, your shoes are not good enough either. And if you save and you get one of those items, be ready to get rid if it in 3 months because you can't wear "last season's fashion". The same happens with your electronics. Your mobile phone or smartphone needs to be replaced as soon as the new version hits the stands, and as it happens the "wow effect" wears out after a month or so. So you end up spending a lot of money on a thing that needs to be replaced by something just as expensive - or more - on a matter of months.
Your house isn't big enough, your TV isn't HD enough, to big enough, of flat enough, or thin enough, your laptop or netbook isn't WOW enough either, and you are told constantly that in order to be happy, you need to have everything, whether you really need it or not. Conveniently, a lot of so-called wise-people (called gurus), preech that "conformism" is a bad thing. May Hyne forbid you ever feel sated, you ever feel like you reached the level you want to be in, because that's "conformism", and that's something you must avoid at all costs. If you get sated, you won't move out of that level and you'll "stop evolving". Really? And where did that took us to?
As it happens, for any regular John or Jane Doe like you and me, you can go on spending on stuff as long as your income allows you - if you have an income. If you make $1000 a month, you are supposed to stay within that frame. However, if you follow your common sense and the lessons you may have learned at home - or at least at Home Economy Class at school - then you know that the money you make should go first and foremost to the main expenses: pay bills, pay the rent, get the groceries. Over that you can save and/or spend on other matters. This is nice and okay, except that this doesn't allow these financial executives to cut a slice of your paycheck for themselves. So, through the market starts the preeching of this "better life" you should attain. You are made feel inadecuate, left behind, or whatever negative feeling that gets you spending. However, if you have $1000, what else can you spend if that's all you have? Well, take on loans, but maybe taking on loans might stop you when you realize you are getting over your head. So what to do? Cheat people.
You are still fed with the idea that you are not well the way you are, you are nurtured into a whiner, an unhappy person who needs to get well, and who will be offered time and again expensive, fake solutions that would offer only a temporary false sense of comfort, but from which the relapse into unhappiness will be bigger. Credit cards came into place with a lot of glam and glitter, selling a sense of freedom that only helped feed irresponsability. You were told you were free while the banks and fonancial companies where giving you enolugh rope to hang yourself. And that was okay, because the banks loved the way you spent, they loved the interest rates they could charge you, and licked their lips in anticipation for the big loads they could cash.
Things went bigger, and a lot of people bought the ticket into the fake dream, spending not only what they didn't have, but also what they didn't have the means to pay back. Banks didn't care either, as they relied also on the brokering system, the bourse and the trading, so they piled up the money, they bundled it up, sold it, and if the loans caved in, it was going to be someone else's problem. They infected the regular people with greed, rubbed their irreal lives in their noses, egged them to look for it even if they didn't have their paychecks to cover for that type of life.
From this you could quickly deduce that the guilty of the story are the greedy executives, that they tricked people into this swirl, but that's not really the lesson. Though banks and the financial sector is pretty much guilty for what happened, the whole system, and even you and me, are guilty of what happened. Why did we buy the lie? Why can't we say: "No thank you, truth is I'm happy with what I have"? Why do we believe a third person who doesn't know us telling us that we are flawed and should be unhappy and unsatisfied? Do you really need fashionable clothes? Are they really that good? A $10 bag works just as well as a $2000 one. What do you do with it anyways? You put your stuff in it, and use it to carry your things around. Why do you need a bag that's more expensive than a used car?
Do you really need another mobile phone or smartphone? Really? What's wrong with the current one, except that it isn't the latest hot ticket? It doesn't work for you anymore? Really? And why do you need to change your body? Why do you strive to look the way not even the model looks like? Why do you need a bigger house? Don't you fit in your current house? Isn't enough what you currently pay in amenities? Isn't enough the chores you have to do to keep your home looking well?
The question raises from the movie, and it got me thinking, whether this would have happened if people would have had decades ago the nerve to say: "you know what? your add is pretty, but I don't need your crap" or say "you may look down on conformism, but let me tell you this: I don't want to be trapped in an eternal loop. I want to reach satisfaction, want to know where's my level of satisfaction, and I don't need to push the envelop further from there, because evolution doesn't run on one track, but many, and if I'm already making the money I want to make, I can concentrate on something else, like the things I can do in my free time".
The media won't tell you this, but remember: it's okay to say "enough" and it's okay to say "no thank you". Your gut knows better than your account executive. Trust it.
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