Taking It Home: Inside Job

Finally, it all makes sense. Mostly.

Listening to the media echo chamber discuss President Obama's tax deal this week, I realized that it's been more than two months since I saw Charles Ferguson's illuminating Inside Job, and, shockingly, I think I still understand his deft explanation of the reasons behind the financial meltdown and, consequently, our current panic about tax rates and unemployment benefits. After numerous films - including but not limited to Capitalism: A Love Story (0/2 for Michael Moore after he dropped the health care ball with the forgettable Sicko), American Casino, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and even The Other Guys - tried and failed to explain what led to The Great Recession, Ferguson's film was like a breath of fresh air, illustrating the financial foolishness in terms that anyone can understand. Good thing, too, because as I said in my pan of the meaningless Wall Street, this was probably the last chance The Recession Movie had to establish itself as a viable genre.

Why was it so hard to present this financial information in a clear way prior to this film? To be fair it does require a lot of detailed explanation, and when filmmakers have other things on their minds (melodrama and an Oscar in the case of Stone's Wall Street; comedy and I-don't-know-what in the case of Moore's Capitalism), the meat of the subject at hand is guaranteed to be lost. Inside Job, in contrast, has little else on it's mind other than telling us what happened and, not accidentally, making us feel really angry about it. This isn't necessarily a fair and balanced documentary (and maybe not a documentary at all?), but it nonetheless presents the facts and allows educated people to talk about them, even though in this case the facts really speak for themselves.

Which would explain why many of the individuals and corporations Ferguson criticizes declined to be interviewed for the film. What would criminals like Angelo Mozilo have to say in defense of themselves, anyway? That they're sorry? They didn't understand what was going on? Right. Even those who were brave enough to face Ferguson on camera were indignant and/or simply speechless as they tried to push the blame elsewhere. I give them credit for agreeing to be interviewed on-camera, but their lack of remorse correlates with my lack of sympathy for their lost billions.

And what separates Ferguson from someone like Michael Moore is that he is neither ambushing these interviewees nor outright accusing them of anything. He asks questions - really hard and uncomfortably direct questions, but fair questions nonetheless. (Ironically, the subjects of these interrogations appear to be in much more comfortable settings than those in Ferguson's excellent No End In Sight, in which he literally interviews one subject in a dark stairwell.) I suppose "fearless" would be an appropriate descriptor for Ferguson, but I almost admire more his ability to illustrate highly complex dilemmas - Iraq and the recession - in layman's terms and, in this case, with extremely helpful graphics.

All that said, despite my better understanding of what led to the recession I've still been troubled by two questions over the last couple of months, namely: Is there an honest banker anywhere in America (I haven't yet read this timely profile)?; and, is greater regulation the only way to prevent greed from overtaking economies?

Regarding the second question, I'm convinced that yes, humans cannot be trusted to fairly and responsibly handle money any more than lions can be trusted to fairly and responsibly handle fresh meat. Our instinct, our human nature, will ultimately be our downfall unless systems are in place to stop us. In a great piece in another recent NYT Magazine, David Frum succinctly outlined some lessons from the November elections that also overlapped with what I took from Ferguson's film. For me, Lesson 2 gets right to the heart of it:

Lesson 2: “The market” (the whole free-market system) must be distinguished from “the markets” (the trading markets for financial assets). Perhaps it’s because the most influential conservative voice on economic affairs is The Wall Street Journal. Perhaps it’s because conservatism disproportionately draws support from retirees who store their savings in traded financial assets. Perhaps it’s because a booming financial sector is uniquely generous with its campaign contributions. Whatever the reason, the intellectual right accords a deference to the wants and wishes of the financial industry that is seldom accorded to agriculture, manufacturing, transport or retailing.

But it’s not always true that what’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for the economy, or vice versa. Nor is what “the markets” want the same as what free-market economics require. Finance plays with other people’s money: financial disasters damage people and businesses who never participated in the fatal transaction. For that reason, financial firms are justly regulated in ways that other firms are not.

What did you take home?