Inside Job BBC2 Documentary 9:00PM 7 DEC 2011

Joe_Bloggs

I had never heard of its existence or the critical success. Anyone else see it and what are your reactions ?
J_B.

Mr_Mumble

Watched this on DVD a while back, I wrote some notes at the time because I was narked at its very left-wing perspective. The film is not without merit because it does skewer a couple of economists (notably no longer academics) who wrote rosy reports about Iceland.

It is very noticeable that a lot of major players (Paulson, Bernanke, Greenspan for example) wouldn't be interviewed by the 'filmmaker' because they know his bias - that's made clear by one of those who was suckered into participating. The BBC were able to get the major participants to talk in the couple of documentaries aired on the one year anniversary of Lehman and they were far more insightful than "Inside Job".

The interviewees treated with most respect are all left-wing politically: George Soros, Barney Frank, Brooksley Born amongst others. There are the usual right-wing bogey men: Ronald Reagan to Phil Gramm. There are ridiculous omissions - you'll hear Fannie & Freddie had to be nationalised but you won't hear about their government sponsored status nor that Barney Frank was those institutions biggest defenders. The overarching narrative is that 'deregulation' was to blame for the crisis any other viewpoint is ignored.

There are a couple of bizarre unconnected tangents. At the beginning of the film Alcoa are whacked for some geo-thermal project in Iceland and there is some threadbare mention of Credit Suisse bank allowing Iran to trade with them.

Plenty of factual mistakes: a chart shows BB as junk bonds (they aren't), they state CDOs are insurance (they aren't) and said the crisis doubled US debt (patently untrue). There's an obvious and lame attempt at trying to make the stockmarket falls look more dramatic than they were around the Lehman crisis (using "points drop" as a barometer when in percentage terms it was very mild compared to 1998, 1987 or the 1930s).

The biggest problem with the film though is that despite being called "inside job" and stating the financial crisis was "not an accident" there's nothing in the film that would make anyone, outside of 9/11 truthers, 2012 doommongers or lizard-men advocates, believe there was some sort of intent to cause a financial crisis.

purch

The biggest problem with the film though is that despite being called "inside job" and stating the financial crisis was "not an accident" there's nothing in the film that would make anyone, outside of 9/11 truthers, 2012 doommongers or lizard-men advocates, believe there was some sort of intent to cause a financial crisis.

Yes. Outside of incompetence and stupidity, not much else is proven.

It would be interesting to hear the views of people such as Larry Summers and Robert Rubin who were major players in the Clinton years and advocates of deregulation and non regulation. In the film they try to portray 1980 as a time when major changes to regulation occurred, but in reality those occurred during the Clinton Administration especially the Gramm Leach Bliley Act in 1999 that repealed the Glass Steagall and Edge Acts.

doire_2

Greedy scumbags at their worst