'Inside Job' director Charles Ferguson searches for truth on Wall St.

CANNES -- In a Cannes Film Festival where the economic crisis occupies front-row center, Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job" puts how we got there in rage-inducing detail. He names the names and the means by which a deregulated financial services industry ran away with our money in 2008. The jittery market this week provided a better spotlight than any publicist could conjure.

"Inside Job" shows how people were sold securities expected to fail, because investment banks had bet on them to fail. Ferguson paints a picture of Sodom and Gomorrah in gabardine. Bonuses rained. Hookers hit the mother lode. Business school deans and economists got cozy in the pocket of the industry, diving into conflicts of interest that would make most of our moral compasses spin out of control. The accused squirm and verbally dance in front of Ferguson's camera. Some high-level principals in Ferguson's "cast," like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner, avoid it altogether.



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