Characteristics of the Inside Job - Report Example

of the of the Concerned 9 July Critical Analysis of Inside Job The 2008 economic meltdown and the consequent credit crunch took the whole world by surprise. Following a five year boom in America that led to the shooting of prices of equities and the real estate, the most prestigious of the financial institutions in the United State of America pursued an expansionary policy, facilitating the subprime mortgages to the customers without any verification of their credit situation. Eventually the housing bubble burst and the American landscape was left replete with a deluge of toxic assets and a hoard of customers who could not pay to the banks the loans they availed. Considering the huge nature of the American economy and it’s intertwining with the credit institutions around the world, it lead to a recessionary situation of a global scale, impacting the growth rates, unemployment situation, industrial output and credit availability at a global level. Since then, the world has been trying hard to understand as to what led to such an irresponsible and aggressive attitude on the part of the American banks that brought down the world economy on its knees. The documentary Inside Job tends to facilitate an understanding into genesis and dynamics of the 2008 economic meltdown by furnishing interviews with a range of people directly involved in it and by attempting a poignant, in depth and exhaustive analysis of the planning and conspiracy that gave way to it. The documentary is indeed a must see for any individual interested in researching the very dynamics of the 2008 economic meltdown. The 2010 documentary Inside Job is written and directed by Charles Ferguson and produced by Audrey Marrs and Charles Ferguson. The documentary is informative in its scope that tends to unravel the conspiracy behind the 2008 economic meltdown. The overall objective of the movie is to bring to fore the individuals, institutions and organizations that played a pivotal role, either knowingly or unknowingly in the economic fall of 2008. The movie tends to address the people who were either directly impacted by the housing bubble burst and the following recession or the researchers and academicians that tend to research the reasons behind the factors that led to this situation. The movie tends to pursue an exploratory and interview based approach, aimed at bringing out the facts and decisions that gave way to the economic situation that shocked the world. More or less the documentary predominantly happens to be factual and fact based, with the director resorting to a minimal of dramatization or fictionalization, perhaps to strengthen the veracity and factuality of his research. The overall objective of the movie seems to be to unravel the blunders that led to the recession and to facilitate a sort of public trial that boldly questions the decisions taken by the prominent characters and institutions that triggered the crash of 2008. The material presented in the movie makes a sound economic sense and tends to be reliable and factual. Ferguson tends to analyze the housing bubble burst of 2008 in the background of the deregulation of the banks and financial institutions in Iceland in 2000. The point that the director intends to make is that the privatization of banks in Iceland in 2000 led to its bankers getting irresponsible and greedy and thereby they opted for decisions and policies that led to the fall of the Iceland economy and the consequent humiliation of its financial and credit institutions. Thereby the deregulation of the Iceland banks in 2000 is taken as a microscopic sample by the director that helps explain the macroeconomic phenomenon that took place before and after the housing bubble burst. The movie is both critical and analytical in its approach and presents the evidence supporting its premises in a systematic and organized manner. The movie tends to interview a range of individuals like politicians, bankers, administrators, heads of statutory institutions and professors to make sense out of the jigsaw puzzle that will be known in the history as the crash of 2008. Though nowhere the director has tried to push an idealistic agenda, still even a cursory look at the movie helps a viewer understand the fact that the movie has an underlying ideological agenda that comes heavily against irresponsible and predatory banking and crony capitalism that defined the economic scenario in the last decade. The movie is a sad revelation of the fact that the United States of America that once based its economic progress on industrialization and sound financial management has become a victim of covetous and unrestrained economic speculation and irresponsible and no holds bar economic indulgence. The crux of the movie is to bring before the public eye the close collaboration and cooperation between the political class, corporate hunters and academicians that unregulated the American financial markets to the extent that the crash of 2008 became inevitable. The idea that tends to dominate the movie is the deregulation of the American banking sector in the 1980s and the 1990s and the close collaboration between the politicians, academicians and the bankers that gave way to an irresponsible financial environment that made possible the crash of the 2008. According to Ferguson, the rot that inflicted the economy in 2008 ensued from the dishonesty and unprofessionalism that pervaded the economics departments in the American universities. The economists that were willing to back the government deregulation of the banking sector were rewarded hefty assignments and jobs to push forward the theories that supported the bankers ‘and the government’s agenda. On the contrary the economists that chose to oppose the deregulation of the banking sector in the United States of America were cornered and set aside. The bankers who favored the deregulation of the financial markets made it a point to solicit the cooperation of such economists through fair and foul means. In the documentary Ferguson also tends to interview many economists who favored the deregulation of the banking sector. The good thing about the movie is that it tends to simplify the technical register that is often tagged to the documentaries based on some economic topic and thereby makes it amply easy for the viewers to understand the facts that the director tends to convey. Though the analysis presented in the movie is professionally sound and astute, yet, nowhere the audience tends to feel that it is getting difficult to understand the facts being put forward by the documentary. The perspective presented in the movie is clear and factual and seldom gives way to any looseness or fictionalization. The movie tends to convey that the rot that led to the slump of 2008 is still imminent in the American banking sector. The US government and the governments in Europe and Asia tried to strengthen the credit situation by pumping money into the banking sector. Yet, the crafty bankers made it a point to appoint the people of their choice in the boards that allowed them to leave with hefty packages from the very same public money that was intended to rescue the economy. However, the movie is silent about the fact as to why the upright people in the government, banking sector and academia failed to do anything to stop or perhaps slow down this recession. Inside Job is a documentary that successfully manages to convey the message it intended to convey. It is a researched based movie and through the interviews and analysis the movie has successfully managed to unravel the close connivance existing between the political class, bankers and the academicians. The movie is anti deregulation and manages to extend its reason in a clear and concise manner. It indeed extends a valid and factual explanation of the factors that led to the crash of 2008 by using a language that is simple and understandable. The analysis put forward by the movie is lucid and clear and thereby the movie not only makes a good watch for the lay people, but is also of immense academic significance. Read More