Film bites back at economy’s bad actors

NEW YORK — If you haven’t been hum­ming tunes from Les Mis­er­ables, you haven’t seen (the movie) Inside Job, the new doc­u­men­tary about how our eco­nomic cri­sis evolved.

The most for­giv­ing Amer­i­can will want to seize a pitch­fork and march on Wall Street. Or Har­vard Square. Or in front of the White House. There are so many despi­ca­ble par­ties, it’s hard to pick a favorite. Is it time to recon­sider the Axis of Evil?

The film, writ­ten and directed by Charles Fer­gu­son, will be open­ing in select cities this week. Although much of the story is famil­iar, Fer­gu­son man­ages to weave decades of bits and pieces into a dra­matic nar­ra­tive that plays like a who­dunit. Names have faces, and sto­ry­telling com­bined with graphic illus­tra­tions helps explain the com­plex series of events that led to the global meltdown.

Here are a few takeaways:

One, try­ing to assign blame to either Democ­rats or Repub­li­cans is point­less. Every­one is cul­pa­ble. From the early 1980s when Ronald Rea­gan dereg­u­lated banks, through the two Bushes, Clin­ton and now Obama, each admin­is­tra­tion has endorsed — and each Con­gress has helped tweak — laws and rules that made sys­temic abuses and the melt­down not only pos­si­ble but, look­ing back, inevitable.

Two, many invest­ment bankers knew the mort­gage loans they were pack­ag­ing and sell­ing were junk. They knew because their own ana­lysts told them so. Not only that, Wall Street insid­ers were bet­ting against their own customers.

From lend­ing insti­tu­tions to fed­eral reg­u­la­tors to con­gres­sional over­seers, those charged with pro­tect­ing con­sumers averted their eyes.

Three, the cozy rela­tion­ship between Wall Street and Ivy League acad­e­mia, wherein econ­o­mists push poli­cies that ben­e­fit them finan­cially, is eye-opening.

In other instances, we see that the same peo­ple who cre­ated poli­cies that ulti­mately led to these abuses are still run­ning the show. This is not to say that what ben­e­fits Wall Street nec­es­sar­ily hurts aver­age Amer­i­cans or that all bankers are cor­rupt, but the sys­tem clearly enabled the abuses that have led to cur­rent circumstances.

When the big banks failed, of course, tax­pay­ers were left hold­ing the bag. Even though there was wide con­sen­sus that the bailouts were nec­es­sary to get credit mov­ing again, there is sim­ply no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the bonuses and golden para­chutes that went to the very peo­ple who drove their insti­tu­tions — and us — off a cliff.

Although most of what the movie high­lights is famil­iar, there’s some­thing jar­ring about see­ing the cul­prits up close in all their taxpayer-subsidized, sun­tanned splen­dor — their mul­ti­ple estates and pri­vate jets jux­ta­posed against shut­tered homes and unem­ployed Amer­i­cans liv­ing in tents. Obscene is the word that comes to mind.

I’m not one to advance class war­fare, and most Amer­i­cans still want a mar­ket sys­tem that leaves open the pos­si­bil­ity that they, too, can work hard and achieve wealth. But it’s clear from (the movie) Inside Job that the game has been rigged so that only a few were in posi­tions to get rich at the expense of the mid­dle class.

Any­one who sees this movie will be furi­ous. Thus, the only remain­ing ques­tion is why some of these peo­ple aren’t being pros­e­cuted on charges of fraud or at least shirk­ing fidu­ciary duty.

It would seem as never before that the White House should hire a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor. Ferguson’s movie, which the pres­i­dent and his team had best watch — and soon — could use a sequel:
The Perp Walk.

Kath­leen Parker’s e-mail address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.