The film that cost over $20,000,000,000,000 to make.
If you have a pulse and a conscience, Inside Job will make your blood boil. Stick your head in the sand and ignore this picture, if you wish, but ignorance is not always bliss. Former software entrepreneur Charles Ferguson turned his attention to documentary filmmaking with 2007's No End in Sight, a critical look at the Bush Administration's mishandling of the Iraq occupation. Ferguson's second feature, Inside Job, is a slickly made and meticulously researched expose of the current financial crisis. To put it bluntly, this is the story of how the corporate elite raped the global economy and reaped the benefits while the world burned around them.
In an opening prologue, the film uses the economic crash of Iceland as a microcosm for the chaos that was to come. The tiny island, whose most famous export is Bjork, saw its three largest banks rack up a debt of $19 billion following government de-regulation.
Ferguson traces the recession's roots to the massive de-regulation of the Reagan era, which lead to the prophetic savings and loan scandals of the mid-80's. However, Inside Job plays no favorites. It may have its fair share of Bush bashing, but it also criticizes Clinton as well as Obama, whose lofty promises of stricter policing fizzled as his administration has become content to enforce the status quo. This incestuous relationship between the government and the financial sector (which has also spread into academia) is equally covered as Ferguson attempts to untie this Gordian knot of back door deals and kickbacks or should I say "campaign contributions?" Politicians are bought and paid for, Wall Street types worm their way into key positions, all so they can rewrite laws to allow banks to engage in riskier ventures with their investors' money. The same officials charged with policing such activities are the very same who
The film also does a splendid job explaining Byzantine concepts such as derivatives, sub-prime loans, and credit debt swaps to the layman. Even then, it's still difficult to conceive how such things could possibly work. Perhaps, that's why the whole house of cards fell apart.
Unlike Michael Moore, Ferguson keeps his involvement to a minimum, but he cannot keep his indignation in check when confronted with the sheer incompetence and boldfaced lies of the few financial advocates who agreed to be interviewed. Most stammer through their segments grasping at straws to provide a reasonable answer while others offer inane doubletalk to justify the massive payouts Wall Street CEOs gave themselves while their own companies crumbled. The subject who comes off the worst is likely Frederic Mishkin, a current professor at Columbia Business School who co-authored a report entitled, "Financial Stability in Iceland," which was published a year before the country's collapse. Mishkin was appointed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in 2006 before resigning in 2008 (amidst the onset of the crisis) to deal with more pressing matters…the editing of his textbook.
Footage from Senate hearings is equally damning. Daniel Sparks, a chairman for Goldman Sachs, is called out for aggressively selling investments, despite labeling them as “shitty” multiple times in an email sent to another top executive. One-time Manhattan Madam, Kristin Davis, surprises no one when she states high-priced hookers and cocaine were the lifeblood of Wall Street traders.
In the end, the current recession was not solely caused by bad investments and people buying homes they couldn't possibly afford. It was created and exacerbated by numerous individuals who committed massive amounts of fraud on a worldwide scale. Yet, no one has been held accountable and no one has been convicted of any wrongdoing. If you embezzled money from your company to gamble in Vegas, you would go to prison. If you ran a pyramid scheme and bilked the life savings from naïve octogenarians, you would go to prison. If you committed these crimes in the boardroom or a penthouse office, you get a $500 million bonus.
Inside Job won the Oscar for Best Documentary during the recent Academy Awards broadcast. Ironically, ABC ran multiple ads for J.P. Morgan-Chase as they disingenuously praised themselves for "helping" so many people during the economic crisis.
Rating: *** ½ (*****)
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