Inside Job

Charles Fergusons Inside Job is an angry,well-argued documentary about the great global meltdown and how the American financial industry set out deliberately to defraud the ordinary American investor.

Charles Fergusons Inside Job is an angry,well-argued documentary about the great global meltdown and how the American financial industry set out deliberately to defraud the ordinary American investor.

The film offers an insightful expose into the Wall Street climate and helps to explain one session of Senate testimony: How Richard Fuld,CEO of Lehman Brothers,was able to defend the 484 million bonus he received after leading his firm into bankruptcy. Lawrence MacDonald,who wrote a book on Lehmans collapse,said on PBS NewsHour: Fulds driver would call Lehman Brothers,and one of the elevators in the building would become frozen. A security guard would come over and hold it until Mr Fuld arrived in the back door. Theres only 15 feet where King Richard Fuld is exposed to the rabble!

One of the most fascinating aspects of Inside Job involves the chatty On-camera insights of Kristin Davis,a Wall Street madam,who says the Street operated in a climate of abundant sex and cocaine for valued clients and the traders themselves. She says it was an accepted part of the corporate culture that hookers at 1,000 an hour and up were kept on retainer,that cocaine was the fuel and that she and her girls didnt understand how some traders could even function on the trading floor after most nights.

From the first scenes of Inside Job,which take place in Iceland during their own financial crisis,Charles Ferguson makes it all too clear that this is a crime that may have been perpetrated largely in America but whose victims can be found all over the world including the shop floor in China.

Though Inside Jobs major focus is on the steps that led to the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008 and the subsequent economic downturn that we are now still struggling with,Ferguson is ultimately after bigger fish: Namely,the codependent nature of business and government and how this has led to the slow disintegration of both the middle class and Americas much-touted work ethic. He has done so with a series of interviews insightful and otherwise new footage,etc.

Charles Fergusons Inside Job is a well-researched comprehensive celluloid documentation of the financial crisis of 2008. Though a documentary,it has all the markings of a feature film from the focused script to the sharp editing,humour unintended,drama and the coup,of course,is Matt Damon as voice over.

RATING:

One for the script and research. One for the sharp editing. One for the quality of reportage and insight.