Wall Street

It appears that movies like Wall Street are making a good impression on the younger generation. Teenage respondents on a Monster.co.uk study picked being a banker as their top second dream career, according to the Daily Mail. The driving factor behind their top career picks is wealth, with 25 percent of teens saying monetary success is the main reason they admire their role model.

According to Indeed.com, the average banker salary is $104,000. Six-figure banking incomes are probably appealing to those who are facing mounting student debts and rising college tuition.

"Particularly intriguing is the increased interest in the banking sector, as it seems young people are not discouraged in any way by the events of the recent recession. Far from discouraging youngsters, it seems that the talk of bankers earning vast bonuses has simply made it a profession more and more children aspire to," says Monster spokesperson Isabelle Ratinaud.

Here's the full list:

1. Doctor, surgeon, nurse, or vet: nine percent
2. Banker: eight percent
3. Actor or actress: six percent
4. Sportsperson: six percent
5. Emergency services (police officer or firefighter): six percent

What did you want to be when you were a teen, and did you end up achieving that career goal?

Tis the season to be receiving your bonus at the end of the year! Whether it be spending, saving, or investing, I want to know what you're doing with your year-end bonus. The holidays are also a spendy season, so I'm wondering if you tend to spend more giving that you're also going to have some extra cash.

Meanwhile, in Wall Street news, the bonuses are back, and some of the big banks are on track for plying about a half a million dollars' worth of bonus money to their average worker, reports CNN. With our 10 percent unemployment rate, that sounds pretty incredible to me. But let's bring our attention back to main street, i.e. people like you and me — what are your plans for your year-end bonus?

It's important for people to know how and why our global economy came crashing down in 2008. Inside Job, a documentary by Charles Ferguson, makes the concepts behind the financial meltdown easy to digest. At the same time, it's hard to swallow the fact that several key people in the government worked for the best interests of the banks and not the greater good of the American public. In fact, the financial crisis wasn't created in the last few years. The seeds were planted decades back and were largely brought about by the merging of Wall Street and the government. Too many finance executives took high-level government positions, and supported the wallets of bankers.

In addition, the film not only highlights the intermingling between the interests of banks and the government, but also unexpectedly reveals the links to academia. Many prominent professors wrote papers on topics in which they were given financial incentive to skew it a certain way. In fact, a current professor at the business school of Columbia University, Frederic Mishkin, wrote a paper touting Iceland's financial stability in 2006 that he was paid $124,000 for. Iceland went bankrupt October of 2008.

I talked to Audrey Marrs, producer of Inside Job, who had also worked with Charles on a previous documentary called No End In Sight. To find out what Audrey had to share about the film, read more after the jump

The former New York Governor, Eliot Spitzer, had a life with all the makings of a realistically raw and heart-pounding film. It's no wonder that the documentary that captured moments of his rise and his downfall, Client 9, makes for a scintillating watch. When Eliot became the attorney general for New York, he became a crusader of justice for the people and dared to fight the big banks on Wall Street. But although he scored huge wins when he prosecuted the biggest financial institutions and executives, he made a couple of very powerful enemies along the way. Eliot's downfall was of his own making, and was one of the ultimate ironies. The man who stood up for the wronged was participating in a vice himself — Eliot had been hiring call girls on the sly.

I must admit, hearing about the schemes some of these powerful companies cooked up made me very uneasy. This film highlights the various flaws a human being can have and shows that money definitely has the power to corrupt.

Are you heading out to the theaters come November 5 to see Client 9?

Looks like there's a long way for us to climb. With the exception of single young ladies, our gender is "worth less" on Wall Street, a traditionally male-dominated industry. According to government data analyzed by Bloomberg, women in that industry earned 58.8 cents to every dollar men made in 2007. More dishearteningly, recent research showed that although 85 percent of PR workers are women, men make up 80 percent of the top management. Despite the fact that we're seeing more women graduate from universities than men, there are still major advances that need to be made. Too few women are in executive-level positions; only 13 CEOs among the Fortune 500 companies are female.

Some researchers attribute this gender gap to child-bearing factors — do you agree with that?

It's the Ig Nobel prize time again! This time I truly laughed out loud when I read who the winners were for the economics category of the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize, a parody of the Nobel Prizes. In addition to silly research such as documenting bat fellatio and curing asthma with roller coaster rides, Wall Street firms were among the ranks of the duly acknowledged. Kudos went out to "the executives and directors of Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Magnetar" for their creative ways of investing that lead to the global economic downturn.

Maybe the companies execs were too modest about their part in the credit crisis, because they did not bother to show up or even decline the invitation. Ig Nobel research editor Marc Abrahams said, "We made a few attempts but soon realized it probably would not be possible. They never responded, not even with a 'No, thank you.'" Spoilsports!

The Situation and the rest of the Jersey Shore cast opened America for business this morning when they rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. So this is our economy now?