Just as Paine's political pamphlet brought the rising revolutionary sentiment into sharp focus by placing blame for the suffering of the colonies directly on the reigning British monarch, Ferguson’s documentary places the blame for the world economic crises squarely on the shoulders of the bankers, politicians and academics who together have colluded to defraud the world economy of trillions and trillions of dollars.

This crisis didn’t just happen as a natural by-product of economic cycles as these despotic criminals would have you believe. It was a concerted policy of deregulation and financial engineering cooked up by people who have names and faces and now a great deal of your money.

Certainly there are the banker robber barrons, and to this point much of the focus has been on CEOs like Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs), Vikram Pandit (CitiGroup), Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide) and Dick Feld (Lehman), and these scorpions are certainly one leg of the triumvirate that has perpetrated this heist.

In Inside Job, however, Charles Ferguson does us the invaluable service of identifying the unholy relationship between these crooks and the government officials who deregulated the industry in league with academics who legitimized their schemes. In short, this crime against all of humanity would not have been possible without an amazing degree of collusion between the finance industry, government, and the Ivy League institutions. Who are these facilitators? Here’s a short list:

Robert Rubin and Larry Summers

Here are perhaps the two people on the planet most responsible for the global economic crisis, and their concerted push for deregulation goes way back:

Rubin and Summers were responsible for forcing Brooksley Born out of the Clinton administration because as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission she had the temerity to suggest regulating the mortgage-backed securities that eventually proved to be so toxic. Instead, Rubin and Summers pushed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Clinton signed into law in his last month in office, categorically exempting those suspect derivatives from any government regulation. By then, Rubin had moved on to a $15-million-a-year job at Citigroup, which became a prime exploiter of the subprime housing market. As a result of its massive involvement with toxic securities, Citigroup, with Rubin in a leading role until early 2009, had to be bailed out by the federal government with a $45 billion direct investment and a guaranteed Fed protection for $306 billion in potentially toxic assets. Citigroup, a merger of the old Citibank and Travelers insurance company, was made legal only by the Financial Services Modernization Act, which Rubin backed while treasury secretary. Then, in one of the most egregious conflicts of interest in US history, he went to work for the new bank, which took advantage of the changes in the law to buy up the infamous subprime lenders, beginning with Associates First Capital. The Economist magazine wrote of that purchase that “it extends Citi’s already huge credit card operation to a lucrative new niche (price insensitive, if default prone, borrowers)” and questioned whether investors would see Citi’s bold new venture “as something smart, such as ‘evolved credit extension,’ or something seamy such as loan-sharking.” Rubin was a major proponent of the firm’s seamy expansion into the mortgages that proved to be toxic, and by 2007 Citigroup was the second-largest subprime servicer, after the only slightly more infamous Countrywide. Link

Summers has an amazing history of deregulation of the financial industry and has enriched himself in the process. With one foot in academia and one in government his role in this catastrophe can not be overstated:

As a rising economist at Harvard and at the World Bank, Summers argued for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. Later, as deputy secretary of the treasury and then treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, he implemented those policies. Summers oversaw passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed Glass-Steagall, permitted the previously illegal merger that created Citigroup, and allowed further consolidation in the financial sector. He also successfully fought attempts by Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration, to regulate the financial derivatives that would cause so much damage in the housing bubble and the 2008 economic crisis. He then oversaw passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which banned all regulation of derivatives, including exempting them from state antigambling laws. After Summers left the Clinton administration, his candidacy for president of Harvard was championed by his mentor Robert Rubin, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, who was his boss and predecessor as treasury secretary. Rubin, after leaving the Treasury Department—where he championed the law that made Citigroup's creation legal—became both vice chairman of Citigroup and a powerful member of Harvard's governing board. Over the past decade, Summers continued to advocate financial deregulation, both as president of Harvard and as a University Professor after being forced out of the presidency. During this time, Summers became wealthy through consulting and speaking engagements with financial firms. Between 2001 and his entry into the Obama administration, he made more than $20-million from the financial-services industry. (His 2009 federal financial-disclosure form listed his net worth as $17-million to $39-million.) Summers remained close to Rubin and to Alan Greenspan, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. When other economists began warning of abuses and systemic risk in the financial system deriving from the environment that Summers, Greenspan, and Rubin had created, Summers mocked and dismissed those warnings. In 2005, at the annual Jackson Hole, Wyo., conference of the world's leading central bankers, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan, presented a brilliant paper that constituted the first prominent warning of the coming crisis. Rajan pointed out that the structure of financial-sector compensation, in combination with complex financial products, gave bankers huge cash incentives to take risks with other people's money, while imposing no penalties for any subsequent losses. Rajan warned that this bonus culture rewarded bankers for actions that could destroy their own institutions, or even the entire system, and that this could generate a "full-blown financial crisis" and a "catastrophic meltdown." When Rajan finished speaking, Summers rose up from the audience and attacked him, calling him a "Luddite," dismissing his concerns, and warning that increased regulation would reduce the productivity of the financial sector. (Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, and Alan Greenspan were also in the audience.) Soon after that, Summers lost his job as president of Harvard after suggesting that women might be innately inferior to men at scientific work. ... Then, after the 2008 financial crisis and its consequent recession, Summers was placed in charge of coordinating U.S. economic policy, deftly marginalizing others who challenged him. Under the stewardship of Summers, Geithner, and Bernanke, the Obama administration adopted policies as favorable toward the financial sector as those of the Clinton and Bush administrations—quite a feat. Never once has Summers publicly apologized or admitted any responsibility for causing the crisis. And now Harvard is welcoming him back. Link

Alan Greenspan and Tim Geithner

Greenspan was a consistent advocate of deregulation and ran the Fed as an arm of the financial industry, making possible the bubbles which have burst with such dire consequences:

The housing bubble was all about adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) with teaser rates of one to seven years – which are primarily based on the benchmark Fed Funds.

The rock-bottom teaser rates, permitted by the 1.0% Fed Funds rate, were the primary reason that many homebuyers were able to qualify for mortgages they couldn't otherwise afford – which, in turn, enabled them to bid U.S. home prices up to "bubble" levels. By pushing down the cost of short-term money, the U.S. central bank enabled homebuyers to make big bets on rising real estate prices. Without the Fed's help, few borrowers would have "qualified" for these risky mortgages and real estate prices never would have been bid up so high. Greenspan expresses exasperation now, as he did then, that his careful nudging of interest rates higher by quarter-point increments did not translate into corresponding increases in long-term rates. Unfortunately, according to Greenspan, the markets would not cooperate with his wise guidance, and to his dismay, mortgage rates fell despite his best efforts. As they say in Texas, that dog just won't hunt. If the "measured pace" of his quarter-point rate hikes were too slow to produce the desired effect, why didn't Greenspan jack up the pressure? With interest rates far below the official inflation rate for so many years during the bubble, he certainly had plenty of room to maneuver. The claim that he was unhappy with the ultimate results of his rate hikes – despite his having done nothing to adjust that policy – is ridiculous. In addition to his colossal errors on interest-rate policy, there were many other ways Greenspan blew air into the real estate bubble. One example was what the market called the "Greenspan put." By creating the perception in word and deed (that has since proven accurate) that the Fed would backstop any major market or economic declines, lenders became more comfortable making risky loans. In an often-quoted 2004 speech, Greenspan went so far as to actively encourage the use of adjustable-rate mortgages and praised home-equity extractions for their role in contributing to economic growth. In fact, rather than criticizing homeowners for treating their houses like ATM machines, he often praised the innovative ways in which such homeowners were "managing" their personal balance sheets. In short, Greenspan was as much a proponent of leverage for homeowners on Main Street as he was for bankers on Wall Street. Link

Tim Geithner was always around to make sure that government would not get in the way of the banks crazy financial engineering and to see that no meaningful regulation was enforced:

Indeed, Geithner's consistent support for big-bank rescues dooms any real efforts to end "too big to fail." That's why, for the nation to truly move past the crisis, Geithner needs to go. Although Geithner first came to Treasury in 1988, he didn't hold any leadership positions until 1995. But it was during those early years that he developed his apparent contempt for Congress and representative government. In 1994, Mexico found itself unable to repay loans to a host of Wall Street investment banks. The Clinton administration pushed legislation to lend Mexico the cash — but the new Congress voted it down. Geithner, then deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy, orchestrated back-door assistance to Mexico via Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund.

There was a national-interest case for helping out our southern neighbor. But it remains true that Wall Street was a huge beneficiary of that rescue — it escaped paying a price for tens of billions in foolish lending. Geithner, meanwhile, soon found himself in the middle of another round of bailouts — as Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's point man with the International Monetary Fund on the Asian financial crisis. The claim was that IMF "rescue packages" were needed to stabilize Asian economies — but US banks again saw their losses reduced as a result. On leaving Treasury, Geithner soon ended up at the IMF, an organization whose primary purpose seems to be to bail out US and European banks when they suffer losses on their developing-world investments — a mission Geithner evidently shares. From 2003 until his 2009 appointment as Treasury secretary, Geithner served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The New York Fed's role as the top Wall Street watchdog can't be overstated — so if regulatory failure contributed to the recent financial crisis, then few regulators contributed more than the New York Fed and its chief, Tim Geithner.

Plus, the New York Fed chief is a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee — the Fed body that determines monetary policy. And Geithner strongly supported the Fed policies of that era — particularly the overly expansionary monetary policy that directly contributed to the housing bubble. Yes, the chief blame falls on former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan (and to a lesser degree with then-Fed governor Ben Bernanke), but Geithner had plenty of chances to voice concerns about the growing housing bubble. He didn't. Thankfully, Secretary Geithner's efforts to move his financial-regulatory "reforms" through Congress have so far failed. The core of his plan involves giving the Fed permanent bailout authority, which would be an unmitigated disaster: We need to end the cycle of bailouts, not double down on it. If there's a common thread to almost every bank bailout over the last 15 years, it's that Timothy Geithner was always somewhere in the room. Each of these "rescues" brought short-term stability to our financial markets — but only at the cost of long-term instability. Only a handful of individuals could truly be called architects of our financial-regulatory system. Geithner, without a doubt, is one. Link

Martin Feldstein, Glenn Hubbard, Frederic Mishkin, Laura Tyson, Richard Portes and John Campbell

These academics used their offices to legitimize the financial schemes while making personal fortunes from the financial industry in consulting fees:

Martin Feldstein, a Harvard professor, a major architect of deregulation in the Reagan administration, president for 30 years of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and for 20 years on the boards of directors of both AIG, which paid him more than $6-million, and AIG Financial Products, whose derivatives deals destroyed the company. Feldstein has written several hundred papers, on many subjects; none of them address the dangers of unregulated financial derivatives or financial-industry compensation. Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the first George W. Bush administration, dean of Columbia Business School, adviser to many financial firms, on the board of Metropolitan Life ($250,000 per year), and formerly on the board of Capmark, a major commercial mortgage lender, from which he resigned shortly before its bankruptcy, in 2009. In 2004, Hubbard wrote a paper with William C. Dudley, then chief economist of Goldman Sachs, praising securitization and derivatives as improving the stability of both financial markets and the wider economy. Frederic Mishkin, a professor at the Columbia Business School, and a member of the Federal Reserve Board from 2006 to 2008. He was paid $124,000 by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce to write a paper praising its regulatory and banking systems, two years before the Icelandic banks' Ponzi scheme collapsed, causing $100-billion in losses. His 2006 federal financial-disclosure form listed his net worth as $6-million to $17-million. Laura Tyson, a professor at Berkeley, director of the National Economic Council in the Clinton administration, and also on the Board of Directors of Morgan Stanley, which pays her $350,000 per year. Richard Portes, a professor at London Business School and founding director of the British Centre for Economic Policy Research, paid by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce to write a report praising Iceland's financial system in 2007, only one year before it collapsed. And John Campbell, chairman of Harvard's economics department, who finds it very difficult to explain why conflicts of interest in economics should not concern us. Link

Inside job does us a wonderful service by clearly explaining what happened and just as important who did it. That many of these people have been chosen by the Obama administration to continue to run the show is absolutely terrifying.

If you care about this country, if you care about the world, go see “Inside Job” today. I promise you will come away not only very well informed, but very, very angry. Become familiar with these people. They are stealing your future. Nothing has changed. They have not been punished. They have not even slowed down. They are in still in charge, and for the future of the world they must be stopped.

Bonus:

"Inside Job" trailers and clips