Inside Job

Charles Ferguson's documentary does a great job of laying out the financial crisis and showing the outrage that bank executives, who deserve to be called "banksters," have not been prosecuted.

My favorite line is Nouriel Roubini's response when he's asked why there has been no investigation of the crisis. "Because then," Roubini says in his thick accent, "you would find the culprits."

Hopefully the film will stoke the sense of public outrage and make it impossible for the politicians to sweep this under the rug. As I've made clear in my MarketWatch columns, I think the non-response to the financial crisis (along with numerous other mistaken economic policies) are the reasons for Obama's failure, at least so far, as president. The film makes patently clear why Geithner, Summers and Bernanke as well -- all involved in creating the mess -- could hardly be relied upon to clean it up.

Most of what was in the film was familiar to me, but there were a couple of novelties I appreciated. One was the film's focus on the corruption of academic economics. I suspect Ferguson had to go this route because he couldn't get enough bankers and government officials in front of the camera, but it's certainly a valid point and completely in line with the complaint of the post-Keynesians about the thuggish hijacking of the profession. Martin Feldstein, in particular, who I have thought of as simply misguided, came across as smug and odious.

The other novel approach was the focus on the role of drugs and sex on Wall Street. We financial journalists have to sail above this seamy side of life, but it's gratifying to see Ferguson not shying away from it and putting it in the proper perspective of the rampant sense of entitlement and amorality that characterizes all of Wall Street activity. It is another sign of the absence of any sort of integrity.