A film about the 2008 financial crash

Hi

3 of us went to seen "Inside Job" on Monday. We came out rather dumbstruck. Why? Because it shows how big finance has corrupted government and academia in the US. Need to know how far the same things happen in London!

Here's  my little review.

Highly recommended. We laughed sometimes - at the incredible denial responses of the top bankers, but overall very depressing and enraging. Main facts: the top financiers were all in it together: encouraging "predatory" loan selling, cashing in on insurances against the failure of investments they knew would fail, selling products which they knew were "crap", bribing the rating agencies to label these products as AAA when they were worthless.
Most of this is relatively well known. New to me was the fact that the finance industry spends billions lobbying senators etc. to persuade them that de-regulation is good for everybody when they know damn fine it's good for them and no-one else. A Chinese financier described the situation as "private games played at public expense". Totally new to me was the fact that the top academics in business and economics (and top executives of universities) are also totally compromised in being consultants and directors of financial institutions, and writing studies paid by them. (e.g. 2 of the top dogs wrote very positive "independent" assessments of the Icelandic banks (before the crash) which were paid for handsomely by Iceland's Chamber of Commerce.
Most depressing of all is that the revolving door between top banks and Federal Reserve/Govt. advisers continues; Obama is shown during his campaign insisting that the finance industry be regulated, but now he has appointed the same rogues who colluded in the bubble and crash. One independent interviewee, when asked what the government should do, said "Wall Street is the government".
After all that you have to shrug your shoulders when you learn that the billions these people earned off the poor suckers has stayed in their pockets, and that their life-style included drugs and prostitutes on company expenses!
The film includes a thumb-nail sketch by a psychologist of the ruthless personlity-type of most financiers. 
Ray