Inside Job is a 2010 directed by Charles Ferguson.
It is a documentary of the events leading up to the 2008 financial crisis
, the worst disturbance to the world economy since the Great Depression. The film takes the view that the American financial system, and specifically Wall Street, are inherently corrupt. The sequence of events begins with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, in which the financial regulations in place since the Great Depression were mostly repealed. Lack of regulation leads to unbridled speculation by banks and investment firms. A key point made in the film is that the bankers and stock traders engaging in this speculation did not have to worry about the risks that they were running because they ran no risk, getting all their money up front. The big investment firms made increasingly risky and increasingly dishonest gambles, even as the whole system became underpinned by mortgage-based securities that were inherently unstable. Finally, in 2008, disaster struck. Would the Wall Street people who brought the crisis on face any accountability?
Tropes:
- Call-Back: The intro discusses how financial speculation wrecked the economy of Iceland. Much later in the film, in the section dealing with conflicts of interests in academia, it's pointed out that the academics who wrote the rah-rah "deregulate Iceland" papers were paid by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce.
- Documentary: A very angry documentary about the criminal activities of Wall Street that led to the 2008 financial crisis and a worldwide depression.
- Hookers and Blow: One part of the film discusses how the traders and stock brokers that were getting rich spent their money on cocaine and prostitutes. One interviewee notes that making money stimulates the same part of the brain that cocaine does, and a Miss Kitty relates how the Wall Street stockbrokers paid for her hookers with corporate credit cards and billed it to "market research."
- Inside Job: The main thesis of the film, hence the title. As the film relates, the firms and individuals that brought on the financial crisis did so because they were making huge amounts of money doing it, and also because they knew they'd never face accountability. After the house of cards collapsed, no one did any jail time, everyone kept their money, and except for Lehman Brothers all the big firms that had inflated the bubble were bailed out by taxpayers.
- Karma Houdini: Part IV, "Accountability", details how none of the major business leaders who brought on the crisis faced any consequences. The head of Countrywide was sent into retirement with a nine-digit payoff.
- The Ken Burns Effect: Done in the usual way with stills, like when the camera zooms in on pictures of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers as the narration describes how they used their positions of power to loosen regulations.
- Narrator: Matt Damon provides the narration.
- Scenery Porn: The opening shots of the staggering natural beauty of Iceland are used for effect, as they're followed immediately by shots of Alcoa mines befouling the landscape.
- Stock Footage: Plenty, like mass protests in Iceland, or a highly embarrassing cable news clip in which a pre-crash Ben Bernake rejects the very idea that a prolonged downturn in the housing market could ever happen.
- Talking Heads: Many, including financiers such as George Soros that relate what was going on in Wall Street, politicians like Barney Frank, and journalists who wrote about the disaster before it happened.
