Word: plot
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Though the plot is the same 10 years later, a different actor is playing the lead. In 1997, Asian countries sent ripples through the global financial system, beginning with Thailand's devaluation of the baht after a collapse of the nation's real estate bubble. In 2007, it is the U.S. and its subprime mortgage borrowers causing the greatest disturbance in credit markets in a decade. At the root of the turmoil is aggressive lending to American home buyers who previously were unable to obtain credit. Financial engineers pooled these loans together and sold off pieces representing different presumed levels...
...Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter (all three Bourne movies) making his directorial debut here, balances character study with thriller elements, while adroitly shifting the plot's sequence of tenses over a four-day period. Whatever lethargy his movie falls into in its early passages, it rouses itself for a finale about which I should say little, except that it's likely to send the audience home happy and satisfied. I guess it's just the contrarian in me that wonders if real corporations are so awful, and the stalwart souls and whistle blowers who work for them so numerous, as they...
...Laden should know by now that if he does manage a terrorist attack, the only thing he should count on is a hardening of America and its allies' positions. Especially in Europe: An attack there, such as the foiled plot in Germany, would sweep away European unhappiness about secret prisons and Guantanamo, once again lining Europe behind the U.S. in its war against al-Qaeda...
...importance placed on an attack succeeding, meanwhile, means that jihadist plots - whether prepared autonomously, or inspired and shaped from places like Pakistan - will almost always be attempted in countries and against targets where success has been judged greater, and by operatives best placed to pull them off: locals. The immediate political calculations often ascribed to such schemes - the German plot seeking to strike U.S. installations for its involvement in Iraq, and to also force Berlin to pull its troops from Afghanistan, for example - are actually usually secondary concerns...
...others - is a prime target not for what we do, but what we represent. None of this is new, and unfortunately each new attack or attempt is only the most recent in a long series. Which is exactly why we need to learn as much as possible what each plot tells us about the wider threat, because I'm afraid it's one we'll be facing for decades...