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

Inside Job transcript – Sony Pictures – September 2010 67
02:33:15.19
{THE PRESIDENTS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
AND COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY REFUSED TO COMMENT
ON ACADEMIC CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.
BOTH DECLINED TO BE INTERVIEWED FOR THIS FILM.}
CHARLES FERGUSON: So, uh, what do you think this says about the economics
discipline?
CHARLES MORRIS: Well, heh heh, heh, it has no relevance to anything, really. And,
and fe-, indeed, I think, um, it's a part of the, it's a s-, important part of the problem.
02:33:32.23 {PART V: WHERE WE ARE NOW}
02:33:47.10
NARRATOR: The rising power of the U.S. financial sector was part of a wider change in
America. Since the 1980s, the United States has become a more unequal society, and
its economic dominance has declined. Companies like General Motors, Chrysler, and
U.S. Steel — formerly the core of the U.S. economy — were poorly managed, and falling
behind their foreign competitors. And as countries like China opened their economies,
American companies sent jobs overseas to save money.
02:34:24.15
DANIEL ALPERT: For many, many years, the 660 million people in the developed world
were effectively sheltered from all of this additional labor that existed on the planet.
Suddenly, the Bamboo Curtain and the Iron Curtain are lifted; and you have 2.5 billion
additional people.
02:34:41.16
NARRATOR: American factory workers were laid off by the tens of thousands.
DANIEL ALPERT: Our manufacturing base was destroyed, literally over the course of a
few years.
02:34:49.23
NARRATOR: As manufacturing declined, other industries rose. The United States leads
the world in information technology, where high-paying jobs are easy to find. But those