Let's Make Money Directed by Erwin Wagenhofer

The documentary "Let's Make Money" directed by Erwin Wagenhofer was instantaneously published before the global financial crisis 2008. Besides presenting the distances that money covers, it identifies its fundamental deployment as well as the minority of mighty people who govern it. In general, the documentary aims at demonstrating the multiple aspects and effects of the contemporary financial system, which practically affect the entire global population. Thereby, the director criticizes the intrinsically egoistic and thoroughly unethical behaviour of multiple financial and political operators who generate revenues at the expense of millions of unintentionally involved citizens around the globe. Workers from developing countries continuously proliferate other's money while remaining poor in person and being completely at the mercy of the capitalistic, Western society. This essay shall present arguments against and in favour of modern instruments of financing from an ethical perspective in order to examine the reasons and consequences of the excessive striving for additional welfare.

In times of globalization, the interconnectedness of economic and political activities between developed and developing countries has been constantly increasing accompanied by a permanent generation of money through financial transactions. Simultaneously, the gap between the rich and the poor continuously amplifies, which creates a globally dispersed divergent attitude towards financial transactions. The documentary clarifies that financial markets generally consist of the non-physical trade of capital among persons, institutions and their respective relations, whereas the latter constitutes the fundament of associated drawbacks. In the contemporary financial system, shareholder value - i.e. the maximization of return on investment - seems to account for the ultimate benchmark. Thereby, financers operate in a network of multiple individuals that are all aiming at simultaneous objectives, which fosters their assertiveness and strength. With respect to the activities in connection with modern instruments of financing, public authorities failed to adapt regulations according to the irrational behaviour of their executers. This inadvertence resulted in both a lack of accountability as well as defeasibility and thus set manifest incentives for unethical conduct. One can assume that public authorities lack the intrinsic moral appreciation themselves since they could otherwise have intervened appropriately. Although adequate incentives to execute certain activities under consciousness are lacking in the contemporary global environment, it is coward to say that an individual does not possess the force to determine its proper decisions. Every decision, and even no decision, implicates a specific choice and thus an intrinsic judgement about right or wrong even though an analysis of these terms goes beyond the scope of this paper (Crane & Matten, 2010). However, the unnatural egoistic character of individuals, which is represented in the achievement of material objectives, apparently dominates the natural human state of solidarity in an extensive manner. Consequently, the entire normative quintessence such as social values and norms on which our global system is arranged on suffers among intentional ignorance, regardless of the different understandings of what primarily constitutes morality or ethics. At least the term and the associated intention of responsibility should designate a concept that is familiar to everyone.

In opposition to the minority of people who "let their money work for them" (Let's Make Money, 2008) a majority of people from developing countries is exposed to the significant negative effects of those value-generating financial instruments. Hereby, the documentary traces the reproduction of money and finally distorts any illusion that money is able to work in a self-contained manner. In fact, human beings steer production and associated accumulation of money. However, the intrinsic function of these human beings differs in terms of contract awarding and execution, i.e. people from developed and developing economies. And so as the functions differ, so do the ethical attitudes, at least from a contemporary perspective. Those who feature welfare in their immediate environment refuse any decline of their proper fortune, which could increase others though. Extremely prosperous financial managers paradoxically exploit millions of human beings in underdeveloped countries in order to proliferate their invested money while those who are essential to the process are not appropriately compensated. The privatization of earnings and socialization of losses creates enormous conflicts in the world and even questions the collective character of the individual. Therefore, it can be concluded that the process of global deregulation in the financial sector should rather be denominated merciless exploitation whereby economic rationality turns into irrational and greedy behaviour.

In the documentary, the director mainly stresses the significant discrepancies caused by the financial transactions: an immense accumulation of funds in opposition to a destructive distress in other parts of the world. In fact, the design of modern instruments of financing originates from the industrialized economies and their respective financial actors. If these were intended to create a well-balanced global welfare, financial participants from the developed economies would not entirely absorb the benefits to their proper good. The established financial system rather primordially undermines ethical values in favour of financial benefits and colossal growth that no one scrutinizes since those economically and politically responsible persons, who potentially obtained the power to exert it wisely, experience no harm from it. In the documentary, this rigorous behaviour is illustrated by means of one of the developing economies. Africa is endowed with valuable resources of gold, which is constantly mined. The output is directly transferred to Swiss banks without compensating the African workers for their time and effort spent. Although financial investments could create valuable long-term benefits in all parts of the world when endorsing underdeveloped economies, investment bankers withdraw other's property in a highly myopic and impudent manner. Besides sacrificing rationality and any sense for sustainability, the self-interest of these operators seems to increase with increasing welfare because they don't even regard the sentiment of how it could be to exist on the other side of society. Although they dominate in terms of economic and political power, the inferiorly miss the borderline of any characteristics upon which a society shall consist on. For financial operators in developing countries, developing countries - or emerging