By increasing international sales of US products, the US economy is able to life minimum wages and provide better benefits for employees working in the system. 95% of the world's population lives outside of the US, and so the potential is massive. More than 41 million US jobs rely on the trading industry and international trade boosts the potential spending power of each American household by around $10,000 every year. Around 98% of all businesses trading internationally are small companies, and so it is vital to the local economy.

Electrical machinery and computers are the US' largest exports, which combined account for over $3billion annually into the US economy and collectively make up almost a quarter of all exports. While the price of making electronic and computer equipment is falling and many large conglomerates are favouring the manufacturing processes abroad, it still plays a vital role in the economy of the US.

The fastest growing export economy was in Mineral fuels and oil, which increased by 72.4% over 7 years, starting in 2009. It now contributes $94.7billion to the economy. The international sales of cars wasn't far behind in economic growth, showing an improvement of 68.8%.

While exporting is vital to the economy, the US actually buys far more international products than it sells abroad. The US spends at least $50billion a month more on imports than it gains from exports, and the US imported $2.252trillion worth of goods in 2016.

The top exports actually seem to mirror the most popular imports, with electrical machinery and computers taking the top spots. The fastest growing import economy is vehicles, making up 12.7% of the market at $285billion. This has increased by 113.7% over the last seven years. This is followed by furniture and domestic goods, up by 94.5% in the same period.

There are a number of benefits to international trading. Firstly, some countries are better at making particular products, and some companies can make products for cheaper. On the other end of the scale, some products are worth more in some places than in others. This effectively allows people to optimise a profit by manufacturing a product in one place and by selling it elsewhere, and to save money by buying a product or raw materials from a place where they are cheaper. International trading creates a lot jobs in different roles, from transport to more administrative positions.

On top of the quality and the prices of products, there is also varying demand across the globe. Your product could be much more sought after in a foreign country, particularly if they can't manufacture or produce it themselves at all. This means its value increases, once more allowing you to potentially inflate your profit further. This really helps to improve the economy in developing countries which often have products that cannot be grown or manufactured in the US due to different climates. International trade has been the main source for economic growth in the 20th century. It helps to control the fluctuating prices of products within a country by providing competition and reduces dependancy on existing markets. Without the ability to trade globally, the economy would simply collapse.

In 1929 the US Stock Market suffered the biggest blow it has ever seen. It was the beginning of the great depression, and it wasn't until 2954 that the price of stocks had regained the same value as before. On what has become known as “Black Tuesday”, 13 million shares were traded, wiping out thousands of investors and losing billions of US dollars.

It's estimated that, at the time, around 60% of the population was living below the minimum wage that was predicted to be able to survive, and as the economy suffered such a large crash, the poorer families out of this percentage were not able to buy anything anymore, so therefore stopped purchasing products. This had the knock on effect of job losses in the factories and companies as there was no demand to increase production. Unemployment became a huge issue with an estimated 12,000 people being made unemployed every single day during the depression's peak and peaking at 24.9% of the total population. Wages decreased by 42%, economic growth slumped by 50% and worlds trade by a massive 65%. Over the course of the week, the economy lost $30billion, which today, with the price of inflation. would equate to over $377.5billion.

Other effects were that 1616 banks went bankrupt, 20,000 companies went bankrupt, and 23,000 people committed suicide in one year, which is the highest rate ever recorded. There was no support system for unemployment back then which forced people to extreme measure. Apparently, some people were starting forest fires to become fire fighters, and farmers would kill their animals to bypass the cost of keeping them as nobody was buying the meat, despite it being recorded that people were starving to death.

What we have learnt from all of this is that we need to regulate the economy. The crash was initiated by banks lending freely to speculators who inflicted the stock to heights that were just no sustainable - basically, share prices became much higher than what they were actually worth. Around 40% of all bank loaned money was being used to purchase shares as people saw it as a way of making money quickly, like the Gold Rush.

With a lack of government protection, when the economy crashed, there were no safety nets. Policy makers used the problems faced during The Great Depression period to build up regulations which are still used today, including bank deposit insurance and social security. Despite this, the economy also slumped in 2008 due to a de-regulatory fervour from the 80s and 90s, however without the regulations established from The Great Depression, things would have been considerably worse.

Although the stock markets crashed again in 1987, and suffered the largest economic decline in a single day, because of the lessons learned from The Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the following Great Depression it wasn't so disastrous for the goal economy, and after only two years, market prices were restored. This shows us that regulation is effective, for when the economy collapses.

With an increasing trend in ethical and environmentally conscious investment and the knowledge of both the decreasing supply of fossil fuels and the pollution they exert, the pressure is on and constantly augmenting for greener energy sources. One of the fastest growing energy sources in the world is wind power, gained through the use of wind turbines which is a clean and renewable source.

Unlike other energy plants, turbines can be set up in locations without a water source. Most other energy sources require water for either turning the turbines or for cooling, and in places like California which often suffer from water shortages and drought, this can be problematic.

Wind energy is an endless supply, for as long as we have the sun to heat up the earth there will always be wind. The turbines are cost effective to set up, and can be built on land already being used for farming as they only take up a small amount of space and the rest of the land is left unharmed. This can provide an additional income for landowners.

Wind power is also a very fast growing economy, arguably the fastest in the US. It has the potential to create 600,000 new jobs by 2050 and is expected to grow 108% in the next ten years. It is estimated that by 2030, a quarter of Europe will be powered by wind energy with and estimated €474 billion of cumulative investment in new assets.

Wind power, while decreasing in price, is expensive to initially set up. In areas without much wind it may not prove to be cost effective, and often it may be cheaper to install traditional reactors and power plants. Because a few people don't like to look at the turbines and because most windy areas tend to be far away from the cities, turbines are often set up far from the places which they are powering, which then requires longer electricity lines to be built to accomodate them, although this does revitalise rural economies. Some people also complain about the low ‘hum' sound that some old ones omit but people who understand the clean energy side see the beauty in them.

There is also a level of concern over damage to migrating birds who often use the wind to navigate, although turbines have a lower impact on the environment than most other sources of electricity.

A wind turbine is an intermittent source of electricity as it can only produce power about 30% of the time, and not necessarily when needed.

With more companies looking to trade ethically and an increasing interest in ESG investments, the exigency for wind power the market makes it a very valuable resource. Over the last twenty years, the cost of generating wind power has dropped more than 80%. When turbines were first set up in the 80's, wind power could cost as much as 30c per a kilowatt hour. This has now dropped to as little as 2c. The typical lifespan of a wind farm is 20 years, and there is extensive research on how to extend this even further.

Although “The Big Short” was released in American cinemas in 2016, its relevance as a film will endure for generations. Beautifully shot and ingeniously written, the movie recounts the extraordinary tale of a handful of financial investors and businessman who foresaw the stock market crash of 2008, and the different choices they subsequently made—some to try to save the housing market, and others to profit off of the impending disaster. Interestingly, the movie's significance is in no sense time-contained: although the events of the narrative take place in the early twenty-first century, the film poses questions about the ethics, practices, and future of Wall Street that ought to linger in our cultural consciousness for decades.

The ensemble cast of “The Big Short”—which includes Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, and many others—does a tremendous job in developing and maintaining the complicated atmosphere of the film. Gosling is unctuous yet irresistible as Jared Vennett, the crafty but morally devoid businessman that the audience loves to hate. Bale is both endearing and surprisingly convincing as astute but socially inept physician and hedge fund manager Michael Burry—a far cry from his usual role as charismatic hero. Pitt lends the film surprising and oft-invaluable moral gravity as Ben Rickert, a retired financial genius fed up with the opportunistic ethos of Wall Street. And Carell, as Mark Baum—the obstinate, indomitable banker who predicts the financial disaster that would ultimately bring the world economy crashing down—is simply superb. Carell plays the role with humor, passion, and most importantly, absolute conviction: through his inimitable portrayal of a virtuous man working on Wall Street during one of the most shameful moments in its financial history, the audience is granted full access to the complex world of American business.

The film is spliced with images and clips from music videos, political footage, and other cultural images from the early 2000s, effectively imbuing the narrative with the same atmosphere of confidence and prosperity that characterized twenty-first century America before the crash. When the economy eventually falls in “The Big Short,” the audience can practically feel the fear and perplexity of the national public. Most striking of all, though, are the moral questions inherent in the actions of the film's main characters: because we are privy, in hindsight, to the same information as Vennett, Burry, Rickert, and Baum, the audience is faced indirectly with a number of difficult choices. Very few of us knew before 2008 what the stock market would become, but what would we have done if we had? Would we, like Vennett, have apathetically attempted to make money off of our singular knowledge? Would we have worked tirelessly, like Baum, to warn the world of the coming disaster even in the face of heavy ridicule? Or, like Rickert, would we have simply been struck silent by the magnitude of the catastrophe at hand?

Overall, “The Big Short” has emerged as one of the most important contemporary cultural representations of the American business world. The film is an equal parts a slick story of successful investing, and a haunting cautionary tale; however, it is by no means a pessimistic indictment of Wall Street. On the contrary, it is a thoughtful and honest chronicle of the years leading up to one of the greatest financial disasters in history—and a stunning depiction of the lives and ideals of the men who saw it coming.