The Disputed Truth: Inside Job

by Jack, Jon, & Matt

Jack and Jon have some things to say about Charles Ferguson financial expose Inside Job, and they aren't shy about saying them. Matt tries to keep the peace while they get to bottom of what the film does right and what it does wrong.




**CLARIFICATIONS & CORRECTIONS**

4:17 clarification: Glenn Hubbard was Chief Economics Advisor under George W. Bush, current Dean of Columbia Business School, and one of the masterminds behind Bush's controversial tax cuts. When director Charles Ferguson asks him to disclose some of the companies he's consulted with, in case of conflict of interest, he compares the line of questioning to a deposition, says agreeing to be interviewed was a mistake, and challenges Ferguson to “give it your best shot!”

4:59 clarification: Jack cites an NPR interview with Ferguson, which can be found here.

6:27 correction: Jon asserts that Ferguson cuts away from interviews throughout the film while his subjects are still formulating their answers. In fact, he only does this twice. He does, however, often include only incomplete answers, sometimes for the sake of brevity or apparently to prevent the subject from backing up their assertions. As Matt and Jack state later in the podcast, virtually all documentaries of this type do this to varying degrees. The same cannot be said for the multiple instances in which Ferguson gives himself the final word during the interviews, undercutting his subjects and not allowing them to rebut him.

7:29 clarification: Matt refers to an instance in Fahrenheit 9/11 in which director Michael Moore questions Representative Mark Kennedy on his way into the Capitol. Kennedy's entire response, during which he reveals information contrary to Moore's implication, is cut from the film. This is not an entirely valid analogy. To our [the Stumped staff's] knowledge, none of Ferguson's subjects have accused him of such a blatant misrepresentation (at least not publicly). Moore has since released a transcript of his response, which can be found here.

10:14 clarification: Jack asserts that Charles Ferguson has a background in government. Though he never held public office, he is a doctor of political science and has consulted with many federal offices, including the White House.

10:48 correction: Jon challenges Jack to name a single economist interviewed in the film, suggesting that the film's economic perspective comes from business professors and CEOs. Jack fails to do so, but in fact, most of the film's subjects have backgrounds involving economics. Examples include Daniel Alpert, Sigridur Benediktsdottir, Willem Buiter, John Campbell, Satyajit Das, Martin Feldstein, Glenn Hubbard, Simon Johnson, Christine Lagarde, Andrew Lo, Frederic Mishkin, Charles Morris, Raghuram Rajam, Kenneth Rogoff, Nouriel Roubini, Paul Volckner, Martin Wolf, and Gylfi Zoega. All of these individuals (along with other of the film's subjects, to varying degrees) have had some involvement in the study of economics (which is a social science involving statistical analysis in the study of market trends and their effects over time), be it as a journalist, an advisor, a professor, a researcher, or a public official. The term might even apply to Ferguson himself, who has published papers, written books, given lectures, and now directed a feature film on economic subject matter. Jon is correct in his assertion that economics and business are distinct fields, but they are not mutually exclusive. Some of these economists have gone on to hold positions in business schools, which is probably where the confusion arose. The film itself also spends a great deal of time exposing how businessmen and CEOs have been afforded undeserved authority as economists by media, universities, and government officials, even discrediting some of its subjects by this principle.

14:18 clarification: Without access to the graphs themselves, we have so far been unable to judge the accuracy of Jon's statements on the film's use of graphs and their inclusion of inflation prices. Typically the farther back the data goes, the more necessary such adjustments become. Inside Job deals primarily with data from the past ten years, so inflation is a minor variable in most cases.

20:04 clarification: Matt cites similarities between Ferguson's directing style and that of fellow documentarian Alex Gibney. Fun fact: Gibney was a consultant on Ferguson's Oscar-nominated debut, No End in Sight.

22:07 clarification: Jon asserts that many companies require the use of private jets, so the film's criticism of AIG's jet fleet is unjustified. This is true of many companies, but AIG is not one of them. Since the bailout of the auto industry, use of private jets has gone down, and AIG has decreased its fleet. Despite their association with corporate decadence, private jets do serve many practical functions. For instance, they speed up transit by bypassing the convoluted process of commercial airlines, they guarantee the company control over the flight, and they act as a mobile office so executives don't lose any time from their busy schedules. This is at a much greater cost, so the worth of this trade-off is debatable.

22:50 clarification: Jon suggests that the film unduly criticizes Lehman Brothers for not notifying French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde about their impending collapse. This is a misunderstanding of that sequence. Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke were negotiating a deal for the takeover of Lehman Brothers, but neglected to inform other governments of the disaster on the horizon. They break no laws by their silence, but the shock expressed by Ferguson, Lagarde, and Jon's fellow viewers is very justifiable, given that her close associates failed to warn her of the meltdown (especially after she had personally voiced concerns to Paulson months earlier).