EFTA02535403.pdf

From: Sent: Sunday, February 6, 2011 8:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: You should see this movie/documentary Inside Job (2010) NYT Critics' PickThis movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the fil= reviewers of The New York Times. Sony Pictures Classics Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner in the documentary =9CInside Job." Who Maimed the Economy, and How By A. O. SCOTT "Inside Job," a sleek, briskly paced film whose title sugg=sts a heist movie, is the story of a crime without punishment, of an outr=ge that has so far largely escaped legal sanction and societal stigma. Th= betrayal of public trust and collective values that Mr. Ferguson chronic=es was far more brazen and damaging than the adultery in Nathaniel Hawtho=ne's novel, which treated Hester more as scapegoat than villain.=20 The gist of this movie, which begins in a mood of calm reflection and grow= angrier and more incredulous as it goes on, is unmistakably punitive. Th= density of information and the complexity of the subject matter make =80 Inside Job" feel like a classroom lecture at times, but by=the end Mr. Ferguson has summoned the scourging moral force of a pulpit-s=aking sermon. That he delivers it with rigor, restraint and good humor ma=es his case all the more devastating. He is hardly alone in making it. Numerous journalists have published books=and articles retracing the paths that led the world economy to the precip=ce two years ago. The deregulation of the financial services industry in=the 1980s and '90s; the growing popularity of complex and risky=derivatives; the real estate bubble and the explosion of subprime lending=— none of these developments were exactly secret. On the contrary= they were celebrated as vindications of the power and wisdom of markets.=Accordingly, Mr. Ferguson recycles choice moments of triumphalism, courte=y of Lawrence H. Summers, George W. Bush, Alan Greenspan and various cabl= television ranters and squawkers. Even as stock indexes soared and profits swelled, there were always at lea=t a few investors, economists and government officials who warned that th= frenzied speculation was leading to the abyss. Some of these prophets wi=hout honor show up in front of Mr. Ferguson's camera, less to glo=t than to present, once again, the analyses that were dismissed and ignor=d by their peers for so long. Dozens of interviews — along with news clips and arresting aerial=shots of New York, Iceland and other disaster areas — are folded=into a clear and absorbing history, narrated by Matt Damon. The music (an=opening song, "Big Time," by Peter Gabriel, and a score=by Alex Heffes) and the clean wide-screen cinematography provide an aesth=tic polish that is welcome for its own sake and also important to the mov=e's themes. The handsomely lighted and appointed interiors convey=a sense of the rarefied, privileged worlds in which the Wall Street opera=ors and their political enablers flourished, and the elegance of the pres=ntation also subliminally bolsters the film's authority. This is=not a piece of ragged muckraking or breathless advocacy. It rests its out=age on reason, research and careful argument. The same was true of Mr. Ferguson's previous documentary, =9CNo End in Sight," which focused on catastrophic policies carrie= out in Iraq by President George W. Bush's administration just after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But whereas that film concentrated on=a narrow view of a complex subject — the conduct of the war rathe= than the at least equally controversial rationale for fighting it =94 "Inside Job" offers a sweeping synthesis, going as far=back as the Reagan administration and as far afield as Iceland in its ana=omy of the financial crisis. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the highest-profile players declined to be=interviewed. Mr. Summers appears only in news footage, and none of his pr=decessors or successors as Treasury secretary — not Robert E. Rub=n or Henry M. EFTA_R1_01680956 EFTA02535403 Paulson Jr. or Timothy F. Geithner — submit to Mr.=Ferguson's questions. Nor do any of the top executives at Goldman=Sachs or the other big banks. Most of the interviewees are, at least from=the perspective of the filmmaker, friendly witnesses, adding fuel to the=director's comprehensive critique of the way business has been do=e in the United States and the other advanced capitalist countries for th= past two decades. Both American political parties are indicted; "Inside Job"=is not simply another belated settling of accounts with Mr. Bush and his=advisers, though they are hardly ignored. The scaling back of government=oversight and the weakening of checks on speculative activity by banks be=an under Reagan and continued during the Clinton administration. And with=each administration the market in derivatives expanded, and alarms about=the dangers of this type of investment were ignored. Raghuram Rajan, chie= economist at the International Monetary Fund, presented a paper in 2005=warning of a "catastrophic meltdown" and was mocked as a="Luddite" by Mr. Summers. Meanwhile, some investment bankers — at Goldman Sachs in particula= — were betting against the positions they were pushing on their=customers. An elaborate house of cards had been constructed in which bad=consumer loans were bundled into securities, which, were certified as sou=d by rating agencies paid by the banks and then insured via credit- defaul= swaps. One risky bet was stacked on top of another, and in retrospect th= collapse of the whole edifice, along with the loss of jobs, homes, pensi=ns and political confidence, seems inevitable. How did this happen? Mr. Ferguson is no conspiracy theorist; nor is he incrined toward structural or systemic explanations. Markets are not like tec=onic plates, shifting on their own. Visible hands write laws and make dea=s, and in this case a combination of warped values and groupthink seems=to have driven very intelligent men (and they were mostly men) toward fol=y. In addition to business and government, Mr. Ferguson aims his critique=at academia, suggesting that the discipline of economics and more than a=few prominent economists were corrupted by consulting fees, seats on boar=s of directors and membership in the masters of the universe club. When he challenges some of these professors, in particular those who held=positions of responsibility in the White House or in the Federal Reserve,=they are reduced to stammering obfuscation — Markets are complica=ed! Who could have predicted? I don't see any conflict of interes= — and occasionally provoked to testiness. Mr. Ferguson, for his=part, cannot always contain his incredulity or rein in his sarcasm. Occas=onally his voice pipes up from off camera, saying things like, "Y=u can't be serious!" But it is hard to imagine a movie more serious, and more urgent, than =80 Inside Job." There are a few avenues that might have been ex=lored more thoroughly, in particular the effects of the crisis on ordinar=, non-Wall-Street-connected workers and homeowners. The end of the film=raises a disturbing question, as Mr. Damon exhorts viewers to demand chan=es in the status quo so that the trends associated with unchecked specula=ion of the kind that caused the last crisis — rising inequality,=neglect of productive capacity, endless cycles of boom and bust —=might be reversed. This call to arms makes you wonder why anger of the kind so eloquently exp=essed in "Inside Job" has been so inchoate. And through=no fault of its own, the film may leave you dispirited as well as enraged= Its fate is likely to be that of other documentaries: praised in some qu=rters, nitpicked in others and shrugged off by those who need its message=most. Which is a shame. "Inside Job" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned).=Some drug and sex references and pervasive obscenity, though not the verb=l kind. 2 EFTA_R1_01680957 EFTA02535404