Bankers played a leading role in the crisis, but they aren't criminals

Inside Job director Charles Ferguson caused a stir with his Oscar speech, but his suggestion that people should be jailed over the financial meltdown is simplistic
It was an easy line for an eager crowd. Picking up an Oscar for his scattergun credit crunch documentary Inside Job, director Charles Ferguson got a cheer from Hollywood's finest for a rant about the absence of prison time handed down to Wall Street banking bosses.

"Forgive me," Ferguson told his fellow movie-making luminaries. "But I must start by pointing out that three years after a horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail. And that's wrong."

The baldness of his sentiment, widely shared by the public on both sides of the Atlantic, has caused a stir in the financial community. Interviewed afterwards by the Wall Street Journal, Ferguson expanded on his theme, declaring that "there should be dozens or even perhaps hundreds of senior financial executives in prison now".

Unfortunately, it's just not that simple. Ferguson's remarks are in tune with his entertaining, polemical film, which contains interviews with financial players ranging from George Soros to Christine Lagarde, Nouriel Roubini and Eliot Spitzer. Using the briefest of quotable snippets from each, the documentary builds a crude argument that the global financial meltdown was a conscious "inside job" caused by greedy, ruthless, mendacious, out-of-control bankers.