Inside Job

Americans are perhaps worse than Indians when it comes to corruption for they have legalised it by calling it lobbying. From top CEOs to treasury secretaries to directors of regulatory bodies to academicians were steeped in corruption and were willingly involved in bringing about the global economic disaster of 2008, the shocks of which are still being felt. This movie is an eye opener to how things work in the USA and how even a well meaning Obama failed to do anything about it. The moral of the movie is - Greed is NOT good.
The biggest shock was how iconic institutes like Harvard etc were not only privy to the crime but also were party to it. There is much that Indian bureaucrats need to learn from what the americans did NOT do so that we may insulate our economy from such crimes.
It is depressing top executives of global giants like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers etc looted their own people and global citizens alike to feed their vices with impunity and how, as usual, it was the "aam aadmi", the Joe, who was made to foot the bill. This is a must watch documentary and will surely make you get a yucky feeling for B-Schools' methods to disseminate propoganda so that their coffers remain full. I have myself always hated financial companies' excesses because they really do not care about the investors and always try and sell them products where the company makes a "kill". They should be very closely regulated by a government which does NOT depend on their money to run its election campaigns. The big business - politician nexus is a disease rampant in all democracies and our politicians' eagerness to install nuclear power plants everywhere is a good example of that. This documentary forces us to look inwards and to ask oursleves a simple question - do we need all that we consume these days? Does that make us happier and wiser than the generations before us? Is Greed good?
This should be taught in schools and in colleges that consumption is desirable only till a certain level. Owning 5 homes when one has a family of 3 is Greed. And Greed, my friends, was always, is and will always remain BAD.

The Inside Job is special because it is not a bunch of conspiracy theories. The author has deconstructed the sub-prime crisis after pain-staking research and tons of facts, and it shows. Some of the interviews with the perpetrators of this crime are nothing short of a coup! Towards the end of the interview, they sense trouble and clam up... further proving their guilt. The two biggest take-aways from this analysis were how the academics have been compromised to lend credibility to these greedy strategies, and secondly, how powerful are they that (despite Obama's promises) the same people who caused the crisis are back in the saddle to ostensibly fix it (or fix evidence). This movie will be a guiding light when we are past this recession, and the next one hits us...

Narrated by Matt Damon this outstanding must watch documentary showcases how the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 was triggered in USA by combined efforts of greedy and unscrupulous banks, financial institutes and regulatory bodies.

In the director’s own words the movie displays the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption.

Based on several interviews of Wall Street honchos, former executives of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, Lehmann Brothers and many other heads and CEOs (several of whom refused to be interviewed as stated in the documentary) this movie will make you simmer with anger once you see for yourself how the American financial industry set out deliberately to defraud the ordinary American investor.

When the bailout was announced by the US Govt it was for the investment banks and financial institutes and not for the ordinary American citizens and their European counterparts who had invested their hard earned money into the schemes (which were basically by products of subprime lending mortgages converted into CDOs and Credit default swaps) and lost it.

The irony of it all, the men who were directly responsible for creating this worldwide economic havoc, who made thousands lose their money and their jobs were eventually given hefty bonuses by the boards and reinstated in more powerful positions by the new US Govt.

Whether you are an economist or a B School grad or not even remotely related to the 2008 financial crisis watching this movie will definitely be an eye opener for you. Period.

This is a must see movie to know what caused the Great financial recession. A very complex matter is explained cleanly and in an easily understandable way. Matt Damon narrative is very good.