Inside Job

July 30, 2022

Inside Job is a 2010 American documentary film, directed by Charles Ferguson, about the late-2000s financial crisis. Ferguson, who began researching in 2008, says the film is about "the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption", amongst them conflicts of interest of academic research which led to improved disclosure standards by the American Economic Association. In five parts, the film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices helped create the financial crisis.

Inside Job was acclaimed by film critics, who praised its pacing, research and exposition of complex material. It screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival in May and won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

No doubt this documentary has a bias. But I found that bias appropriate for the subject.

Regulation. A potentially dirty word. But when it comes to the financial services industry, time and time again we see the results of either no regulation or inadequately holding firms and people accountable.

I remember when I interned at Chemical Bank in 1986. All that anyone talked about was Glass Steagall and how the law how out lived its usefulness. "Let the free market determine the outcomes." Personally, I think the only people that benefitted from its repeal were those elites lucky enough to work on Wall Street.

Our brain drain to Wall Street continues. The amount of money youngsters can make there is obscene (my humble opinion) -- as is the money older folks can make!

Wall Street has its own language to provide the illusion that what it does is unique and special. It ain't that unique or special. But we'll never learn the lesson and we will bail it out when we have the next financial crisis. The connection between Wall Street and Washington is too strong to be fixed.