The Legal Perspective based on the film inside job Essay

The Legal Perspective based on the film inside job - Essay Example One legal aspect that was clearly brought out in the movie is the issue of fiduciary duty. Fiduciary duty is a legal obligation that one party, in this case, referred to as the fiduciary, act solely on another party’s called, the principal, interests. In the Inside Job, the representatives of Goldman Sachs violated this fiduciary duty by selling collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that were of doubted quality to their clients (Ferguson and Beck, 2010). The selling of these collateralized debt obligations to client meant that the financial institutions dealing with them was transferring the repayment risks to investors and other clients who purchased them. According to Ferguson and Beck (2010), the financial institutions dealing with these collateral debts obligations won’t be affected in case the collateral debts obligation market collapsed. The borrowers’ credit worthiness did not mean a thing to the financial institutions that lend out collateral debt obligations. Since the investment banks knew of the impending risks in dealing with the collateral debt obligations, they had to part with hundreds of millions to credit rating firms such as Fitch, Moody’s and S&P in order for them to give the credits triple-A credit ratings. However, these rating firms when confronted about their rating, they said that those were only opinions and no one was to rely on them. From these strategies of selling risky collateral debt obligations during the financial downturn, some financial institutions ended up gaining and making millions from these situations. These include the Morgan Stanley and the Goldman Sachs. Fiduciary duties from the above issues in the Inside Job have been breached. The fiduciary duties involve different elements. These include first acting in utmost good faith. The second element is to put the client’s interests first in all actions. The next element was to put all material and