Inside Job tells the story of the 2008 financial collapse that resulted in the loss of 30 million American jobs, the near destruction of the world economy, and the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Directed by documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson and narrated by actor Matt Damon, Inside Job begins with an examination of the collapse of the economy of Iceland, then goes on to explain how the U.S. economy ultimately fell prey to the same toxic forces at a cost of over $20 trillion.
Using news clips, research charts, and first person interviews with Wall Street insiders, journalists, economists, politicians, and government regulators, Inside job traces the beginning of the U.S. collapse back to aggressive financial deregulation during the Reagan era.
The film shows how financial deregulation and the repeal of Depression era safeguards opened the door to the creation of complex derivatives: a brand of unregulated securities that encouraged greater and greater risk taking on Wall Street. Using graphs and simple illustrations, the film explains derivatives in terms anyone can understand (a major accomplishment in and of itself), then shows how trading inflated the housing bubble to a degree never before seen in U.S. history.
During normal times, the details of high finance and government regulation are rarely topics of riveting drama, but Inside Job takes what might otherwise be a dull monologue and crafts it into compelling and disturbing cinema. Asking simple direct questions of some of the key players leads Ferguson to be kicked out of several offices, but perhaps even more unsettling are the interviews in which the implications of his questions fly right over the interviewee’s head.
For instance, clips of an extended interview with Frederic Mishkin, governor of the Federal Reserve from 2006-2008, reveal an almost total lack of appreciation for how his acceptance of a $125,000 payment from the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce might have corrupted his conclusions about Iceland’s stability. Also revealing is the list of noted players who refused to be interviewed: Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Timothy Geithner.
Inside Job is a film with a strong point of view, but it is also a film that allows the inside players to make compelling arguments in support of that point of view just by being who they are on camera. Viewers of all political persuasions will find themselves better informed (and much less comfortable) when the ending credits roll.
