REVIEW: Inside Job Looks Under the Hood of the Financial Crisis and Finds Nothing Pretty

The use of derivatives is positioned as a tipping point, and Ferguson details the systematic dismantling of the checks and balances (by former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan and others) that set them loose. In the aughts the rhetorical battle against such shenanigans became futile: There was no way a word like "regulation" could hold up against "the free and efficient movement of capital." Then it was wartime, and all bets were really off: Coke and hookers were back, subprime mortgages and debt-backed securities were hot, ratings agencies got in on the scam, and in the ultimate metaphor for decadent self-destruction, firms began betting against themselves. It remains a metaphor because they knew if they wound up ruining the livelihoods of millions of people, as British Petroleum recently did, they wouldn't be ordered to pay five billion dollars in restitution; in fact the government would shower more money on them. Disaster averted!

Ferguson built No End In Sight from the testimony of witnesses, experts, and insiders, several of whom could no longer hold their peace. Here the film's authority is divided between those who agreed to talk and those who didn't. Announcement of the demurrals of players like Greenspan and Larry Summers is well-played, though Ferguson gets a little trigger-happy at times, using refusals and snarky cutaways to close issues that merit closer attention. Then there are the people who agree to be on camera but refuse to actually pipe up. One of several rabbit holes Ferguson peeks into suggests that the lock the financial sector holds on the country extends to academia, where business school deans like Glenn Hubbard at Columbia have a finger in every pie, including those that haven't even reached the oven yet.

By the time Hubbard is taunting the inquisitive, questing Ferguson to "give it your best shot," dejection over the whole sodden system has reached a critical mass. I half expected my own face to show up as the next in his line of collusive rogues; why not? I like a buck, and there are at least eight hours of every day that I can't account for. Instead it is Barack Obama who appears, followed by the faces of his finance team -- Wall Street insiders all, the architects of the very disaster he promised to fix -- and the heart-sinking words: "status quo."

Soon after I moved to New York from Toronto in 2003 friends from home were full of questions about the transition: Is it as cold and rude and uncaring a city as they say? Do rich people use you for a footstool? Has a poor person mugged and/or peed on you yet? Within a few weeks I had an answer to those questions and it comes in two parts. One: Contra the received wisdom, the intuitive, equalizing behavioral default in a city of this size is common decency. There are simply too many of us, for instance, to let the door to a busy portal shut behind you, and courtesy is understood as a contribution to the greater (and more functional) good. We hold the door open; we pick up the person who trips on the stairs; and we get frustrated with tourists who haven't learned the swift, deferential art of walking on a New York City sidewalk. We look out for each other; the alternative is chaos.

The second part is flutier and yet more substantial: You get what you give. When I left the house in Toronto, my mood hardly mattered; I could walk the streets insensibly (like everyone else) and come home at par, having barely noticed the doors left to swing in my face. When I leave the house here, whatever energy I am giving off gets sent back to me tenfold. If I set out in a crap mood, I know I'll come home ready to jump off the roof. If I leave feeling good, New York will take me higher. For better or worse, you will reckon with the city and it will reckon with you.

Seven years and one vicious recession later I give the same answer when people ask me what it's like to live here. The second part holds up; its accuracy is confirmed on a daily basis. The first part I repeat more reluctantly, especially after I see a film like this one, and am reminded of my brilliant, laid-off friends scrambling to pay their rent, forced to move away, or left destitute by a broken arm. The social imperative of big-city decency is a nice theory, but I'm no longer sure whether I believe it or just dearly want it to be true.

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