By and large, Inside Job accurately portrays the conflicts of interest inherent in the political, academic and financial regulatory systems. It should make anyone with a soul angry: it is especially aggravating, bordering on hilarious, to watch some high-falutin' academic-types squirm heroically, even become angry, as their whorin' ways are laid bare for all to see.
My own two cents: there was a time when the SEC listed as its core responsibilities ensuring market integrity and investor protection. If you check the SEC's current mission statement, these seems downplayed.
It used to be recognised that market integrity was important not only to facilitate the free flow of capital, but also to maintain confidence in the U.S. securities markets. It's as if there was recognition that the country's strength was tied to its reputation for observance of the rules - the rule of law. There was a geo-strategic dimension to America's reputation for the probity of its markets - sort of like respect for human rights (again - the rule of law).
It might just be a coincidence that both of these priorities - market integrity and human rights - began to founder contemporaneously on the rocks of the Reagan revolution. Perhaps it's just an accident that both culminated roughly contemporaneously with the financial crisis and Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.
As for investor protection, the following is now emphasised on the SEC's website:
The world of investing is fascinating and complex, and it can be very fruitful. But unlike the banking world, where deposits are guaranteed by the federal government, stocks, bonds and other securities can lose value. There are no guarantees. That's why investing is not a spectator sport. By far the best way for investors to protect the money they put into the securities markets is to do research and ask questions.
You know what that means!
The Fed, meanwhile, seems to give a shit about the public - well, officially, at least. Their mission statement is slightly more reassuring. Among other things, they emote:
Today, the Federal Reserve's duties fall into four general areas[, among them]:
- . . . supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers
- maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets . . .
That's more like it!
But this guy, a self-professed acolyte of Ayn Rand, was at the helm:
"Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear."
I blame Ayn Rand!
Meanwhile, Obama shows no signs of doing anything meaningful about any of the above.
Late update: as Artios notes, this just in: no indictments forthcoming. It seems, so sayeth the good Professor Coffee, there are simply too many un-indicted co-conspirators.
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