Analyzed the movie Margin Call from a legal perspective - Term Paper Example

is no character featuring the film that breaks the law, gets involved in conspiracy, or does anything any reasonable person would call unquestionably illegal. Even when the film’s fictional bank CEO makes the decision to peddle all the toxic assets in company’s - the act that factually sets in motion the total collapse of the whole American financial system – this is an understandable, if challenging, choice. If he does not sell first and begin the catastrophe, someone else is there waiting to do the same.

That is the core puzzle of what economists name a collective action matter. If no specific individual or firm’s actions can change things, the only reasonable thing that can be done is assuming everyone else will adopt their most selfish (and perhaps destructive) instincts. Everybody has an incentive to adopt the worst path they think others of following, and hence it becomes a self-fulfilling insight. This not only explains why the bubbles burst, but also illustrates why they build up firstly.

After all, why did big investment banks begun packaging and selling big amounts of mortgage-backed securities that ultimately triggered the crisis? It is because all the other banks did it. They were seeking greater profits, obviously, but profits are the purpose of any company and its survival basis. Each bank’s employees were aware that if they did not get in on this exceptionally lucrative new business branch, they would fall behind their rivals, their share price go down, they would get fired.

The difficult certainty is that with systemic catastrophes like the one that has lead to our current economic crisis, no one is to blame since everyone is to blame. In the end, though, this sympathetic bankers’ dilemma portrayal offers perhaps the most pejorative indictment one can make in the modern capitalist fiscal system (Bernstein 1). After all, if disaster like this can occur even when decent individual are more or less endeavoring to do their best, hence