Krugman Discusses Inside Job, the Movie

[n2doc]

December 6, 2010, 5:59 PM
Inside Job
I finally managed to see the movie. Do see it if you can; it will make your blood boil, and in a good way.

One side reaction: the movie showed the Hamptons, with the caption “two hours from Manhattan.” Only for the little people, guys. Almost 20 years ago — when Wall Street paychecks were small by modern standards — I asked some investment bankers whether getting out to their Hamptons places was a hard drive; there was a silence, then someone said, “It’s only half an hour by helicopter.” In a way, the point is that even Ferguson doesn’t quite grasp just how big the gaps in life experience have grown.

OK, about the economist-bashing: I thought it was basically fair. There aren’t, I think, all that many cases when economists are literally paid to offer a specific opinion — although Greenspan’s defense of Keating qualifies. But the movie didn’t say there are. What it suggested, instead, was a kind of soft corruption: you get paid a lot of money by the financial industry, you get put on boards, but only if you don’t rock the boat too much. Besides, you hang out with these people, and get assimilated by the financial Borg. I think all of that is very true.

I think this film will stay with us; when you ask how the even worse crisis of, say, 2015 happened, the fact that these people got away with it will loom large.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/inside-job/