Inside Job - NYT Critics' Pick

Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner in the documentary “Inside Job.”
Who Maimed the Economy, and How
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: October 7, 2010

As I was watching “Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson’s meticulous and infuriating documentary about the causes and consequences of the financial crisis of 2008, an odd, archaic sentence kept popping into my head. The words come from the second chapter of “The Scarlet Letter” and are spoken in frustration and disgust by an old Puritan woman who watches Hester Prynne, publicly disgraced but without any sign of remorse, making her way from Salem’s prison to a scaffold in its market square. She “has brought shame upon us all ...” the anonymous woman remarks. “Is there not law for it?” More