“Inside Job” filmmaker takes aim at Wall Street in Oscar speech

Documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson was honored at the Academy Awards for his film “Inside Job,” a film which analyzed the 2008 financial crises.

Upon accepting his award Ferguson took the opportunity to issue a scathing critique of the US government’s lackluster investigation into the cause of the crisis. “Forgive me, I must start by pointing out that three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by financial fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that’s wrong,” he said.Meanwhile infamous Wall Street Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, speaking from prison, said he thinks it is unbelievable that the government has not issued criminal convictions following the investigations into the crisis. He called US President Barak Obama’s financial reforms “joke” and said “the whole government is a Ponzi scheme.”Max Fraad Wolff, an economist at The New School said what Madoff is saying is merely expressing the obvious. “Given the size and the duration of the malfeasance and misadventures inside his hedge fund, it does sort of stretch belief that nobody noticed it,” he said. “It does suggest a problem that we’ve had all over American business, including the financial industry, which is, if you do well enough people have a tendency not to ask questions until it’s too late.” The public is very concerned and outraged over the lack of accountability on Wall Street and the rich. American public funds were used to bail out and rescue the bankers, which today the public is struggling to maintain funds of school teachers, social programs, police and fire-fighting forces and other public needs.“The general public sentiment is that guilty wealthy parties weren’t held accountable, but now school teachers firefighters, and social workers and paying to clean up this mess,” Wolff explained. “We don’t seem to be making a priority of our kids in school, our public safety from our police officers, our fire fighters, our social workers, our clerks. We don’t have enough money.”