This is polemic, to be sure - but it is also the most efficient and complete history of the past 10 years of finance that I have ever seen or read. There are few revelations in it, but I appreciate how well Ferguson shows and tells us how small moves several years ago helped to loosen previously tight seals.
I have few small gripes about this, but nothing incredibly important that really gets in the way of the effectiveness of the piece. There is a section in the middle of the film where a shrink to finance guys talks about how much the young Wall Street bankers are obsessed with fucking whores in nightclubs and doing cocaine (this actually comes up twice in the film). This thread really has nothing to do with the economy or anything judgement-wise. I think Ferguson is trying to suggest that the young guys in the firm loved the amazing piles of money they were earning and the power that came with it - but that's a pretty shallow point, really.
There is also no mention of Fed Governor Ned Gramlich's speeches and writings about the looming Sub-Prime lending crisis from the early and middle parts of the decade. This is a shame, because he really saw the problem before it hit and should have been listened to more.
What is great about the film is that I felt like I had heard about or knew almost everything in it, but couldn't see how one thing really lead to another. Ferguson's presentation is clean, efficient and mostly fair. If only the bankers could have been any one of those things.
Stars: 3 of 4
I take my hat off to the author of this article. Well done.
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alesum
Thanks for reviews ! I am waiting for this film from long time. This movie is awesome. I love to watch it on big screen.
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The prostitutes also come up in the documentary Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer. In that film, their point is that the Feds aggressively and almost unprecedentedly went after Spitzer for his private behavior to drum him out of office but ignore the vast opportunity to bust corrupt Wall Streeters on buying prostitutes and use that pressure to turn them into govt witnesses in cases involving the wholesale theft of hundreds of millions of dollars via fraud that Inside Job documents. I think Inside Job uses the whores to illustrate the general lawlessness pervading Wall Street. It may not have resonated with you for various reasons of personal morality....
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