I first heard of Inside Job when it won the 2010 Oscar for feature-length documentary. At which point I ordered it from the library and was less than surprised to learn that I was 63 places down the line, which means I get it until June.
It is a thriller-style telling of the origins and effects of the financial crisis of 2008, laying blame on deregulation of banking from the 1980s onward, particularly of derivatives, the outsized compensation offered to financial services executives, enormous lobbying power of that industry, and capture of economics academics via consulting and board positions. With most of the bad guys off stage and interviews with some of the leading doomsayers of the 2000s, it makes its point forcefully and without much nuance. Given the complexity of the subject matter, nuance may have made the movie too dense, but there is a bit of manichean thinking that could have been softened by making a stronger point of what the present and future of the economy looked like from, say, 2002.
I think of myself as a pretty well informed reader of business news (except not this week, sez the man on the media fast) and there weren't too many surprises in here, but there also was basically nothing that contradicted what I already know about recent financial and economic history. It was refreshing to have the story brought together and I recommend it for anyone who is curious about the financial crisis and worried about future crises, which the filmmakers, and I, think are all too likely, given the absence of reform.
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