> "Inside Job": Global finance as a criminal conspiracy

It might well be the most important film you see this year, and the most important documentary of this young century. In clear, ruthless and specific detail, Ferguson explains how the ongoing financial collapse that began in 2008 was itself caused by the criminal greed of the global financial elite that ordinary citizens had (unwisely) trusted, empowered by government deregulation and by the viral spread of rapacious free-market ideology.

Angry and elegant is an unusual combination, and as a wealthy, well-connected policy wonk who makes expensive movies aimed at a large audience, Ferguson has gotten a mixed reception from the documentary world and from film critics. But "Inside Job," which was the smash hit of last spring's Cannes Film Festival and reaches American theaters this month, has made me a believer. Ferguson is here to tell the world that the crisis that has wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth, thrown millions of people out of work and out of their homes, and further widened the global gulf between rich and poor was no accident. It was a crime.

Ferguson, who made millions in the software industry of the 1990s and has worked as a scholar or lecturer at MIT, University of California at Berkeley, and the Brookings Institution, is definitely no left-wing bomb-thrower or closet Marxist. But he plays one in the movies, you might say. He is both more pragmatic and more intellectual than most people in the film world, which makes him an unusual and challenging interview subject. Here's what I wrote about Ferguson and "Inside Job" from Cannes last May (edited for length and clarity), followed by an excerpt from our conversation.

    "Inside Job" offers a lucid and devastating history of how the crash happened, who caused it and how they got away with it. Furthermore, Ferguson argues, if we don't stop those people -- preferably by removing them from power, arresting them and sending them to prison -- they will certainly do it again.

    With a damning parade of interviews, images and public testimony, Ferguson illustrates how, by the time the 21st-century bubble reached its peak around 2006, the financial industry had ridden 20-plus years of manic free-market deregulation and neoliberal fiscal policy from one crisis to the next, surfing a rising tide of greed and corruption. There are several people in this movie, prominent among them former George W. Bush adviser Glenn Hubbard and Harvard economics chairman John Y. Campbell, who must be very, very sorry that they agreed to talk to Ferguson. Some critics have complained about Ferguson sandbagging such clearly unprepared subjects -- but, no, I'm sorry. There are some people who richly deserve public humiliation, and it's totally gratifying to see them get it.

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