Inside Job

...angry enough, in fact, to demand serious financial reforms. When Wall Street was tanking in 2008 and the entire banking system seemed on the verge of a global collapse, it resulted in a mega-costly federal bailout, all at taxpayer's expense. Meanwhile, nearly all of the people responsible for this collapse have yet to be arrested or prosecuted. And what's worse, this crisis was foreseeable and preventable. These are the facts that are laid bare in Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job", which was good enough to win an Oscar for Best Documentary recently. Now, I still have a hard time trying to figure out about the so-called "derivatives" that Wall Street types use to make profits. What I do now is---and this movie explains it clearly---is that financial institutions were giving out mortgages to people who either couldn't afford it or mortgages that they knew would fail. When the mortgages did fail, the financial institutions made a profit by hedging against those loans. This is damning stuff. Even more damning is how "Inside Job" also looks at those who have profitted from the collapse. One such person is Richard Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, who somehow managed to pocket a $484 million bonus for himself before his company went belly-up. The film also spends a lot of time talking to people like former New York Governor and Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, and his frustration about how difficult it is to prosecute these bankers is palpable (mostly due to lack of cooperation). There's even a Wall Street madam named Kristin Davis, who tells of stockbrokers and traders retaining hookers for $1000 per night and cocaine-fueled parties the night before going back on the floor of The Exchange (somehow, that's enough to make anyone demand reform). Narrated by Matt Damon, "Inside Job" is one of those rare required-viewing films. This is a film that points fingers in virtually all directions because many Wall Streeters end up becoming lobbyists for the government or talking heads for the news networks, thus making financial reform a bit difficult. For those who feel this film doesn't put a human face on the real suffering this unchecked avarice has caused, you might want to watch Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story", which was made about the same time. He covers much of what they talk about in "Inside Job". But see this one first---and foremost.

This is a movie many people need to see. It ends in a startling way. The people who gave us the subprime crisis and its after effects go on not to jail, but even greater power and control. That this can happen is galling. The documentary maybe attacked by some as partisan or biased but I see no grounds for this. It is well made and objective. I recommend this movie to anyone wanting to understand the recent economic crisis and who put us there.

Everyone must check this out!!!