Ferguson has used the ambush interview popularized by CBS' 60 Minutes to grill both the guilty and the extremely guilty in a way that commercial television will never do for fear of offending its sponsors. The Keiser Report on Russia Today is the only exception.
The film starts with the collapse of the Icelandic banks, although the banking crisis began with Public Service Announcements on talk radio pushing loans for minorities. The banks -- many of them local -- feared congressional investigation coupled with potential charges of dreaded racism, so they arranged loan packages that enabled the marginally qualified to purchase houses. The local banks unloaded the mortgages as has become the norm in the industry. You can forget about such quaint notions as the Bailey Building and Loan anymore. This bubble began in 2006, but the Iceland saga was later in 2008.
YouTube has been showing a satire on the subprime crisis by John Bird and John Fortune that has aired since January 2008 which summarizes this film in 8 minutes. But, this film gets to the root of the problem by mercilessly grilling the shysters. Elliot Spitzer got air time, but even he caught the stinging end of the lash from the producer. Apparently, the vanity of of the players left most of them unprepared. The only drawback to Inside Job is the extensive face-time given to the smarmy George Soros -- the mastermind behind global financial speculation.
