Airon Marwyn P.

Bendaña December 16, 2020

BSAIS- III
Financial Management

Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis

Reaction Paper

This documentary just reveals that the legal system of US is broken. The whole film is
focused on putting a pro-bailout spin on what happened during the financial crisis. Watching the
interviews you can see that none of the key players accepted any real accountability for the actions
of the Banks or Investment firms that caused the crisis to begin with. They fail to even recognize the
simple correlation that they used to be CEO's of these institutions and that their leadership had an
impact on the crisis.

I thought it was an interesting perspective and features a lot of insider perspectives from
Paulson/Bernanke/Geithner as well as Bush and Obama. It’s framed very much in defense of the
government’s actions to save the economy, with some limited acknowledgment of the
drawbacks. It is published by the Council on Foreign Relations which is an organization that upholds
the present power structure. While providing good details on the sequence of events during that
tumultuous period, it casts all of the main players as either heroic crisis managers or blameless
players caught up in forces that were beyond their power to manage. There is no finger pointing in
this documentary. On the contrary, the main participants are made to look like they saved the world
from financial disaster.

I might disapproved with the title. The “untold story” huh? The story was first told in
great detail in a book by Thomas E. Woods and it was called #Meltdown someone should let
HBO know. Getting the people who caused the problem and catered the response to their friends
will surely be informational. I am glad for this but there should be more voices included. None of
these people understand how & why the system failed. None of them can admit their failures &
mistakes. How they protected the rich & the banks & turned their backs on the rest of America!
It is revealing. The legal system is broken. The banks & the rich face no consequences or
accountability.