Inside Job Transcript - Final Version - 9.30.10 - Sony Pictures Classics

Inside Job transcript – Sony Pictures – September 2010 19
NEWSCASTER: But while the companies face unprecedented fines, the investment
firms do not have to admit any wrongdoing.
01:22:16.02
SCOTT TALBOTT: When you're this large, and you're dealing with this many products
and this many customers, mistakes happen.
CHARLES FERGUSON: The financial services industry seems to have a level of
criminality that is, you know, somewhat distinctive. When was the last time that Cisco or
Intel or Google or Apple or IBM, you know –
ELIOT SPITZER: I totally agree with you about high tech versus financial services. But
high tech –
CHARLES FERGUSON: So how come? What, what's –
ELIOT SPITZER: Well, high tech is a fundamentally creative business, where the value
generation and the income derives from actually creating something new and different.
01:22:48.17
NARRATOR: Beginning in the 1990s, deregulation and advances in technology led to
an explosion of complex financial products, called derivatives. Economists and bankers
claimed they made markets safer. But instead, they made them unstable.
01:23:04.20
ANDREW SHENG: Since the, uh, end of the Cold War, uh, a lot of, uh, phys-, former
physicists and mathematicians decided to u-, apply their skills not on, you know, Cold
War technology, but on financial markets. And uh, together with investment bankers and
hedge funds –
CHARLES FERGUSON: Creating different weapons.
ANDREW SHENG: Absolutely! You know, as Warren Buffett said; you know, weapons
of mass destruction.
01:23:25.23
{ANDREW LO
PROFESSOR & DIRECTOR
MIT LABORATORY FOR FINANCIAL ENGINEERING}
ANDREW LO: Regulators, politicians, and businesspeople did not take seriously the
threat of financial innovation on the, uh, the stability of the financial system.