At the turn of the millennium Iceland was something of a picture perfect capitalist country. It had low unemployment figures, low government debt, clean energy programs, sustainable food production programs, a good health care system and a good education system. Its GDP was around $13billion. It was praised by many capitalist countries for its development model and was seen as an example to be followed.

However, in 2000 a program of deregulation was aggressively pursued that saw Iceland shift towards the business practices prevalent in much of the rest of the world. In 2008 Iceland went bankrupt. The financial sector had made losses of $100b, over seven times the national GDP.

This is an overview of the documentary Inside Job that was recently shown on the BBC. As one interviewee commented regarding the path Iceland had taken from 2000 onwards, “Nothing comes without consequence.”

The documentary itself is a cross examination of the financial crisis of 2008. It goes into considerable depth to show what happened and how it happened. The level of detail that this examination goes to is commendable and well worth a watch for anyone who wishes to understand what happened and, indeed, what is still happening. In many ways it is like a book, there is so much information packed in that each time you rewatch you pick up on something you missed before. It features a wide array of interviewees who were present at the time, (and makes it clear when certain persons under scrutiny declined an appearance) from whom there are certainly some choice quotes, “When you think you can create something from nothing it’s hard to resist”, and, “Massive private gains out of public loss” are two that particularly stand out.

The content of the program traces through the crisis from the historical roots of the policies of deregulation and the players involved and moves on to show what these polices have led to: the idea of financial institutions ‘too big to fail’. It shows explicitly the way in which these financial institutes acted and how the drive for greater accumulation of profit saw traditional responsibilities that kept the system in check simply deemed irrelevant. In particular the analysis of the growth of subprime mortgages and the bursting of the housing bubble is particularly good (especially if you want to know what a credit default swap actually is!).

It delves into the corruption involved in the crisis, from highlighting the seemingly inexhaustible list of crimes the financial companies were actually charged with prior to the crisis emerging, to the more subtle one, how the subprime loan packages were able to maintain a ‘triple A’ rating meaning they were considered perfectly secure for companies and groups to invest in (particularly for some retirement fund investments that could only be invested in AAA safe investments).

The program puts all the facts on the table but, perhaps inevitably, draws conclusions that are incorrect. The underlying theme of the program hints (and sometimes explicitly states) that reform is the answer needed to undo the crisis and get back to ‘the good old days’. It highlights poor management of the major American motor and industrial companies as reasons they fell behind “their foreign competitors.”

The truth is that in a capitalist mode of production anarchy rules, this in turn led to a massive crisis of overproduction, there were simply too many commodities being produced to be consumed as the individuals could either not afford them or simply had no need for them. From here the birth of credit comes into play. This merely expands the system today at the expense of tomorrow. Only now tomorrow has arrived and no one can pay. This way of thinking did not just extend to the ordinary working people but was rife through the system that looked to capitalise in the short term over any analysis of the long term.

Inside Job makes all of these points to some degree or another but falls at the final hurdle. The program of deregulation, the growth of finance capital, the expansion of credit to deal with overproduction, were not accidents, or random paths that capitalism went down, nor the whim of politicians with a wrong ideology. On the contrary they were the only option for a system that is above all perpetuated by accumulation of profit. There is no nice capitalism vs bad capitalism, there is only capitalism and accumulation is how it functions. This is why the system cannot be reformed to serve the needs of all and must be overthrown for the furtherance of human society and history.

That said I would highly recommend the documentary which is well worth a watch (or two just to get your head round the scope of information!) as it gives a solid insight into the crisis. Bizarrely it is also narrated by none other than Matt Damon. What more could you want!