Potential outline for paper: I'm interested in the traditions of storytelling and folklore in the American Indian culture. I'm not positive it will be an appropriate topic for my research paper, but I am hoping that I can do some research and form a thesis from what I find. Until then, this is the basis for the research I will be starting.
Claim:
An exploration of American Indian storytelling/folklore
Support:
-Is there a similar formula for the stories?
-Purpose of storytelling, who did the telling? Who passed
down the stories?
-How storytelling
connects to other traditions/rituals
-Differences in stories and story telling among different
tribes (NE, NW, SE, SW)
-Creation
-Animals
native to the different regions?
-Compare/contrast to American stories (children’s stories?)
-Explore motifs
-Purpose of stories (ex. Teaching
morals or otherwise?)
-Any aspects adopted from American
Indian tradition by the colonists?
-Were any stories created around the colonists? (positive or
negative)
-If so, how
was the “white man” portrayed?
Warrant:
-Did stories/traditions survive the colonization period?
-If so, any particularly famous ones? (In the Cherokee area
specifically)
Thank you very much for taking the time to read my letter. I
know that your responsibilities are vast, but it means a lot that you consider
interacting with your citizens an important one. I am a freshman at The
University of North Carolina at Asheville and am in an honors language class
that is based around documentary film. This week we watched Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job. Admittedly, though I am an
attentive student and an inquisitive individual, I am not the most familiar
with the complexities of the current financial crisis that plagues our country.
Inside Job was highly didactic and
gave me a basis for understanding the situation. I must say I was shocked by
what I learned.
The film reveals to its likely uninformed audience, a clear
idea of what activity on Wall Street really looks like. I was introduced to
derivatives and to how they allow investment banks to bet on anything, even
such immaterial things as the weather, and still make a profit. I also learned
that “big wig” individuals use this profit for frivolities such as expensive
“escorts,” elaborate drug habits, and extravagant homes, and cars.
Elliot Spitzer, the very man who’s personal business
regarding his activity with prostitutes cost him his New York governor office
in 2008, humbly said “there’s a sensibility that you don’t use people’s
personal vices in the context of Wall Street cases, necessarily to get them to
flip. I think maybe after the cataclysms that we’ve been through, maybe people
will reevaluate that, I’m…I’m not the one to pass judgment on that right now.”
Perhaps your administration believes that the cases are not the same.
You have been quoted as saying “A lack of oversight in
Washington and on wall street is exactly what got us into this mess. We need to
change Wall Street’s culture.”
And yet you have since made appointments to your
administration that are counterintuitive to your proposed priorities.
In 2006, when subprime lending was at its highest and Ben Bernanke
was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, he received numerous warnings about
the dangers of unregulated derivatives. He and the Board refused to do
anything, or to look into the possibility that the bubble could burst and have
overwhelmingly destabilizing effects. Therefore I was surprised and confused to
learn that in spite of his negligence in his position, during your Presidency, Bernanke
was reappointed as Chairman in 2009.You
appointed Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary after his less than adequate
role as the President of the Federal Reserve during the crisis. Gary Gensler, a
former Goldman Sachs executive, who helped ban regulation of derivatives serves
now as the Chairman of Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Though you have spoken about change being needed, as of mid
2010, you had made no attempts to recover any of the compensations given to
financial executives during the bubble. Not a single senior financial executive
had been criminally prosecuted or even arrested. Not a single financial firm
had been prosecuted criminally for securities fraud or accounting fraud.
I know your job as executive is extensive and that it takes
time for policy to be proposed and enacted. I believe in many of the things
that you have established as important. But I also believe you can do better by
America. For our sake and the sake of posterity, remain strong in your opinions
on regulation and reform of our economy. Take action; it will not go unnoticed.
Make people take responsibility for their actions. Don’t let the corruption
take place under your nose. I beg this of you Mr. President. The future of our
nation wholeheartedly depends on it.
When
I began viewing this documentary, which takes a look at the build up to and
causes of the current economic recession, I was afraid it would be a boring,
complex, and confusing take on an issue which I already found difficult to
fully comprehend. However, the film successfully gave me a basis for
understanding the crisis. Director Charles Ferguson combined many varying
interviews with easy-to-understand visuals – for those of us that aren’t
economic wizzes. I felt as though I was being taken on a journey from the years
prior to the crash up to the present (or nearly so, as the film was made in
2010). What I witnessed was shocking.
Economic
Liberals are in favor of more regulation on the free market, and there is
evident economically liberal bias in this film. The director focuses on the
negative consequences of such little regulation of the banking industry’s
behavior. However, I still thought the argument was very thoroughly expressed.
Ferguson not only criticized both the Bush and Obama administrations instead of
favoring one over the other, but he also left out the political affiliations of
all subjects of the film. Ferguson made sure to note that when he was speaking
about a specific individual’s less than moral behavior, the individual would
not agree to be interviewed for the film. He did not simply show one side and
condemn the other. Ferguson did interview a few people who were directly
involved, and was insistent about receiving answers. Some may argue that he was
too combative with his interviewees and that a line needed to be drawn, but in
a situation where the events are laid out in black and white, I appreciated his
determination to wheedle out some truth.
It is clear to me that the sole force driving
the investment banking industry is GREED. To quote the Grinch, “the avarice!
The avarice never ends!” But really, in all seriousness it is disgusting how
the powerful, influential, big shots of the economic and banking worlds
manipulate the goings on for their own benefit. They knowingly make bad loan
investments with people who they are aware will likely never be able to pay
them back, and then bet against them. They rate bad loans with high grades so
as to convince their borrower. Then when the borrowers cannot pay back the
money, the bankers still make money
off of them. It’s sick. These men and women reap enormous benefits from their
jobs. I was absolutely flabbergasted to discover that when the economic bubble
popped, CEOs, CFOs, etc. simply resigned and were PAID OFF. Their punishments
for fraud were their multi-million dollar severance checks. The vast majority
of these conniving “businessmen” never went on trial for their corruption, and
even some – as seen in appointments by both Bush and Obama – were rewarded for
their cunning thievery.
I
don’t want greedy, self-interested, dishonest, slime-balls controlling the
Federal Reserve. I don’t want to pay taxes to bail out banks that were the
causes of their own destruction. Why should we have to clean up their mess?
Honestly I am so angry; I’m finding it difficult to articulately continue. I
was perhaps most appalled to discover that for the right price, prestigious
economics professors from ivy-league universities who must have known the dangers of the inflating bubble, have been
recruited to write papers to support the banks and deny any issues with the
lack of regulation! To hear some of these figures attempting to defend
themselves was pathetic. There is no excuse. Why did they do it? Simple. They
wanted another condo in Hawaii, a private jet, a yacht, or hell, a "high class" prostitute. There is no
legitimate defense. Similarly, watching the few court appearances of some of
the employees of Goldman Sachs and other banks was laughable. These men and
women who have spend their careers on a power trip, are reduced to the
despicable, thieving, scum they are, practically whimpering their feeble
responses. The inherent manipulation, gluttony, self-indulgence, and blatant
disregard for anyone but themselves, is abhorrent and unconscionable.
