Inside Job – Movie Recommendation

If you see just one movie this year, make it the documentary Inside Job. Then tell everyone you know to see it. In just two hours, through interviews with financiers, politicians and academics, it builds a case that greed and deregulation have corrupted not only Wall Street, but Washington and academia as well. If you don’t know what I am talking about, think Larry Summers.

Or think Glenn Hubbard, Chief Economic Adviser during the Bush Administration and current Dean of the Columbia University Business School. He is on the board of MetLife, and was previously on the board of Capmark. He has written articles advocating for financial deregulation and has consulted to many financial services firms. As he is interviewed in the film, you watch him gradually transform from a jovial professor into a cornered pit pull. When the issue of whether all the consulting dollars he earns from Wall Street influence the articles he publishes, he snipes “I don’t have to answer that.” From there, things get ugly.

The film opens with Iceland’s experience, which is described as the “purest experiment in deregulation”. It then heads over to the United States, taking us to Wall Street, Washington hearing rooms, the world of high-end brothels, and then to Mr. Hubbard’s ivory tower.

I didn’t care for Michael Moore’s (2009) Capitalism: A Love Story. I won’t bother with Oliver Stone’s (2010) Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. As a finance professional, I know too much to be impressed with the average film about Wall Street. Inside Job is different. It was produced and directed by Charles Ferguson. Two years ago, he released No End In Sight, hands down the best film on our war in Iraq. Inside Job is unequivocally the best film to date on the 2008 market meltdown.