The economic collapse of 2008 was no accident. It was an “Inside Job,” according to filmmaker Charles Ferguson. His award winning documentary is essential viewing for anyone who wants to look behind the curtain at the forces that caused the real estate/subprime bubble that brought many of the world’s biggest economies to their knees.
There are plenty of bad guys involved in the “Inside Job”—unscrupulous lenders, Wall Street firms eager to sell unsuspecting investors securities made up of toxic subprime loans, rating agencies that made enormous sums for blessing those same rotten securities with their AAA stamp of ultra-approval, politicians of both parties, the Fed, and academics who churned out pro-industry propaganda disguised as scholarships.
Do not fret that “Inside Job” is one of those “eat your vegetables” boring documentaries where the message is important, but the filmmaking is dull enough to undo the caffeine jolt of a triple espresso. This film is riveting from start to finish. The narration by Matt Damon is exciting, the cinematography is crisp, and there’s even a dollop of sex, in the person of a Wall Street madam.
If you have any curiosity at all about how some of the supposedly best minds in the world could ignore the simplest of truths [Newton—what goes up must come down; Buffett—if you lend to people who can’t pay you back, it will not turn out well.], this movie will help explain it. Sadly, what it won’t do is give you any reason to believe it won’t happen again. But that’s not the movie’s fault, it’s ours.
Smiley Bishop & Porter LLP represents the victims of Wall Street securities fraud, but sometimes it’s a really good idea to view the big picture through a telescope rather than individual stories through a microscope. “Inside Job” offers the big picture. The only question is whether we can collectively handle the truth.
