Charles Ferguson’s ‘Inside Job’ (full feature-length documentary)

July 9th, 2012

If you haven’t already watched Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job, which won the Oscar for best documentary in February 2011, (and indeed even if you have already seen it) I strongly recommend watching this film. Turn on full screen and make sure you have decent speakers or headphones.

As I said in my February 2011 blog about the movie (Why the ‘Oscar’ for Inside Job is a sort of turning point)

Ferguson, a former technology entrepreneur who sold his internet software business to Microsoft in 1996, reveals how a heady cocktail of hubris, self-delusion, corruption and greed led to practices including the securitization food chain which ultimately triggered the financial tsunami that brought down the global economy in September 2008.

He shows how the seeds of financial Armageddon were sown by a series of deregulatory measures introduced by Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Alan Greenspan — many of which followed relentless lobbying by the industry, associated professional services sectors and cheerleading economists. And he also reveals an almost incredible truth — that many of the people responsible for triggering the crisis are still in charge.

Writing in the Vancouver Sun, Katherine Monk said that, unlike Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, this film is likely to “light a Molotov in your mind”.

Ferguson has since written a book, called Inside Job: The Financiers who Pulled Off The Heist of the Century in the UK and Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America in the United States. It elaborates on the themes explored in the film,and Ferguson is as dismayed as ever that virtually none of the people responsible for crashing the global economy (and they are not just bankers) have been brought to justice.

Please also consider buying the DVD, not just to support Ferguson and his crew for their superb work, but also for the extras included — including deleted scenes and interviews that were not included in the movie. In particular, I recommend watching the interviews with Lee Hsien Loong, the Singapore prime minister. h/t Capitalism Without Failure

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Posted by Ian Fraser on Jul 9 2012. Filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry