soci 2500 Week 6 Assignment

soci 2500 Week 6 Assignment | Tulane University

Part 1: Government Regulation and Markets in Inside the Meltdown

1.      What was the role of government in terms of regulating the activities of corporations/companies in the video? Did these regulations do what they were intended to do? Why or why not? Explain.

2.      What was the role of the private markets (the activities of the corporations/companies) in the video?

3.      Were those companies/corporations concerned about the “public good” (e.g., positive benefits for society or some segment of the society), or were they just concerned with making profits (for shareholders or their managers—and themselves)?

Part 2: Markets, Finance, Debt, and Social Responsibility: Neoliberalism in Action

1.      Thinking about what we saw last week in our discussion of neoliberalism and the development and expansion of the credit industry during the 1980s–2000s (which is still happening today), and considering what we saw in the film The Card Game, in which some of the people from the banking and credit industry argued that most of the problems of debt were “personal responsibility” issues on the part of the consumer (as opposed to the activities and behavior of the banks and credit card industry), use all of these materials and class discussions to answer the following questions:

a.       According to the video Inside the Meltdown, were mortgage lenders (and the associated banks, insurance firms, and investing firms) held to the same standards of responsibility (“personal responsibility”) as those discussed in The Card Game? Explain.

b.      Who “paid” (in terms of both consequences and finances) for the lack of responsible or ethical business practices of those groups (e.g., risky loans to subprime borrowers, credit default swap insurance products, pushing individuals to purchase homes they couldn’t afford, etc.)?

c.       Was this a problem? Is this still a problem? Explain.