Review of Inside Job (2010) by Edwin P — 11 Jul 2011

Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job".

"Inside Job" is required viewing for those interested in knowing the cause behind the biggest global financial crisis since the Great Depression. Told in a step by step straightforward manner, it walks the viewer from the buildup to aftermath of the global financial collapse of 2008 using extensive research and interviews of key financial insiders, politicians, journalists and academics.

Having also read Michael Lewis' "The Big Short" about the same subject matter, Ferguson's documentary is more comprehensible in my view, as it looks at the bigger picture of the crisis that took place instead of the minutiae of certain aspects of it such as the creation and how profits can be made from collaterized debt obligation instruments to name one, that populated most of Lewis' book. For those with little or no financial background, Ferguson?M)s approach is easy to understand and comprehensive. He also looks at how politics played a role in creating the crisis but without injecting his own political bias.

"Inside Job" is insightful and a searing indictment of those who took advantage of a system fraught with opportunities for greed and abuse and a government who is complacent through it all and whose efforts in preventing such a crisis from ever happening again is lackadaisical at best. (Winner of the 2010 Best Documentary Feature Oscar).