March 12, 2011

Did Inside Job do an inside job on The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences?

Sir, in “Why the public wants its pound of banker’s flesh” March 12, Gillian Tett refers to the Oscar won for best documentary by Inside Job which covers the financial meltdown.

That documentary does not mention even once the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, that global financial regulator which provided the intellectual back-drop for the more than 60 to 1 bank capital leverages authorized, and which drove the banks into the waters of the triple-A rated securities collateralized with lousily awarded mortgages that detonated the crisis. The only way I can explain that Oscar is by suspecting that the Inside Job did itself an inside job on The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

And by the way I do not care a iota about a pound of banker’s flesh, I would be more than satisfied having the Basel Committee regulators parading down 5th Avenue wearing cones of shame… and of course being banned from regulations forever.