Re: You should see this movie/documentary

"Inside Job," a sleek, briskly paced film whose=title suggests a heist movie, is the story of a crime without punishment, =f an outrage that has so far largely escaped legal sanction and societal s=igma. The betrayal of public trust and collective values that Mr. Ferguson chronicles was far more braze= and damaging than the adultery in Nathaniel Hawthorne 's-novel, which treated Hester more as scapegoat than villain. He is hardly alone in making it. Numerous journalis=s have published books and articles retracing the paths that led the world=economy to the precipice two years ago. The deregulation of the financial =ervices industry in the 1980s and '90s; the growing popularity of comple= and risky derivatives; the real estate bubble and the explosion of subpri=e lending — none of these developments were exactly secret. On the contr=ry, they were celebrated as vindications of the power and wisdom of market=. Accordingly, Mr. Ferguson recycles choice moments of triumphalism, court=sy of Lawrence H. Summers , George W. Bush , Even as stock indexes soared and profits swelled, t=ere were always at least a few investors, economists and government offici=ls who warned that the frenzied speculation was leading to the abyss. Some=of these prophets without honor show up in front of Mr. Ferguson's camer=, less to gloat than to present, once again, the analyses that were dismis=ed and ignored by their peers for so long. The same was true of Mr. Ferguson's previous docu=entary, "No End in Sight," which=focused on catastrophic policies carried =ut in Iraq by President George W. Bush's administration just =fter the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But whereas that film concentr=ted on a narrow view of a complex subject — the conduct of the war rathe= than the at least equally controversial rationale for fighting it — "=nside Job" offers a sweeping synthesis, going as far back as the Reagan =dministration and as far afield as Iceland in its anatomy of the financial crisis. Both American political parties are indicted; "In=ide Job" is not simply another belated settling of accounts with Mr. Bus= and his advisers, though they are hardly ignored. The scaling back of gov=rnment oversight and the weakening of checks on speculative activity by ba=ks began under Reagan and continued during the Clinton administration. And=with each administration the market in derivatives expanded, and alarms ab=ut the dangers of this type of investment were ignored. Raghuram Rajan, ch=ef economist at the International Monetary=Fund , presented a paper in 2005 warning of a "catastrophic me=tdown" and was mocked as a "Luddite" by Mr. Summers. How did this happen? Mr. Ferguson is no conspiracy =heorist; nor is he inclined toward structural or systemic explanations. Ma=kets are not like tectonic plates, shifting on their own. Visible hands wr=te laws and make deals, and in this case a combination of warped values an= groupthink seems to have driven very intelligent men (and they were mostl= men) toward folly. In addition to business and government, Mr. Ferguson a=ms his critique at academia, suggesting that the discipline of economics a=d more than a few prominent economists were corrupted by consulting fees, =eats on boards of directors and membership in the masters of the universe =tub. But it is hard to imagine a movie more serious, and=more urgent, than "Inside Job." There are a few avenues that might hav= been explored more thoroughly, in particular the effects of the crisis on=ordinary, non-Wall-Street-connected workers and homeowners. The end of the=film raises a disturbing question, as Mr. Damon exhorts viewers to demand =hanges in the status quo so that the trends associated with unchecked spec=lation of the kind that caused the last crisis — rising inequality, negl=ct of productive capacity, endless cycles of boom and bust — might be re=ersed. "Inside Job" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongl= cautioned). Some drug and sex references and pervasive obscenity, though =ot the verbal kind.

it is very unfair, and misrepresents tons of inf