INSIDE JOB: 'A Wall Street Government'

It's been two years since the global financial meltdown of late 2008. Yeah, U.S. unemployment recently edged below 9 percent but what really has changed during the past two years? Not much. Just watch Charles Ferguson's terrific, sobering documentary on the '08 crisis, how the crisis could have been prevented and the weak regulators who weren't watching what they were supposed to police -- and still walked away with millions in compensation anyway.

The film is available on AMZN (#1 in the documentary category) and for rent on Netflix. See it. But be warned. As an American, you'll be infuriated.

As Ferguson summarizes in the DVD outtake interview, the '08 crisis essentially was a bank robbery -- not by gun-totting outsiders -- but by highly-paid senior employees inside the banks.

An important point. This story is Not complicated for average Americans to understand. Ferguson uses clear graphics to explain the ponzi scheme that was high risk, subprime loans that were packaged and repackaged into financial products called derivatives. The winners: Bankers making fees off selling those products. The losers: Americans who were bullied by predatory lenders into signing ARMs they didn't comprehend.

Ferguson also takes to task American economics and those economists who co-authored papers supporting the benefits of a deregulated marketplace and that all was OK -- all for whopping fees, some $100K for a "deregulation is good" paper. From Harvard to Columbia to Stanford, why aren't academics forced to disclose other forms of income if it represents a conflict of interest?