TIFF: Inside Job

My TIFF slate kicked off last night with one of only 6 screenings available on the opening day of the festival. Inside Job is a documentary from Charles Ferguson (of the Oscar nominated No End in Sight) which takes on the financial crisis of 2008, basically asking the question "How the hell did this happen??".

And now I'm depressed about the state of the world financial markets.

And I think I'm supposed to be.

My main takeaway from the film is that deregulation and lack of oversight were the main culprits of the meltdown. Not to take away from the greed and corruption of the financial industry at all because let's face it, if everyone played nice we wouldn't need rules in the first place. Or, as my friend Georgia put it, there are basically about 15-20 old white men who are running the banks, governments and the world.

While I don't want to try and rehash the points of the film itself I want to mention that Ferguson does a few things really well. He manages to cut throught the bullshit of the "it's all so complex you wouldn't understand" and pretty simply and straighforwardly explain the basics of some of the market instruments that were being used. He makes a very interesting connection between academic economists and how they aren't being incented to be impartial but rather have some extreme conflicts of interest in terms of what they are studying, publishing and teaching. And they managed to get some very powerful and influential people on the record (though far more declined to participate for fairly obvious reasons).

Ferguson and his producer Audrey Marrs presented the film and participated in a Q&A after the screening. While thanking the many people involved in the making of the film he gave a special thanks to his lawyers who I'd imagine were and will be quite busy dealing with some powerful men who really don't come off well in their interviews. He also discussed some of his motivations for making the film and said he really hopes the American public takes action and forces changes to the regulations.

All in all a good kickoff to TIFF. It's definitely a movie worth seeing, and I felt a little more educated coming out of it. There are worse ways to spend a couple of hours than listening to Matt Damon tell you things.