I watched the movie, Inside Job, yesterday on my new Blue Ray player. Blue Ray, by the way, is everything it is cracked up to be. It makes me wonder how I watched fuzzy DVD’s. Inside Job on the other hand, was not. The movie, I felt, was a little unfair to Angelo Mozilo the co-founder and former CEO of Countrywide Financial. The movie made it seem Mozilo had somehow invented subprime mortgages and forced people almost at gunpoint to take these mortgages. The movie took other liberties I felt were a little reminiscent of Michael Moore. The movie however, begged a question.

If you agree the subprime mortgage mess is responsible for our current economic woes, why exactly have politicians pretty much given a pass to the culprits and gone after government employees?

If Inside Job offends your sensibilities as it did mine, I would recommend All The Devils Are Here (The hidden history of the financial crisis) by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera. Nocera and McLean are not exactly bastions of liberal thought and present, in my view, a well-balanced account of the financial crisis. Their analysis includes just enough history to understand the crisis beginning in the fall of 2007.

It is the rare easy read on a subject which normally yields tranquilizer-like books. People who are serious about learning the lessons of this crisis should read this book. This book and any other serious work on this subject tell us two things. First, people like Brooksley Born, the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission tried to tell the foxes something like the financial crisis was going to happen. Second, the foxes continue to guard the hen house.

When I say foxes, I mean people like Timothy Geithner (the current Treasury Secretary, then the President of the New York Federal Reserve), Ben Bernanke (the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, then a board member) and others in various advisory capacities. These people with others like Alan Greenspan, Hank Paulson, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers who are no longer in government viciously fought any regulation which may have prevented the crisis. The same crowd, backed by 3.2 billion dollars from financial industry lobbyists, fought financial regulation passed before the 2010 election. They continue to fight any sane controls of what most outsiders deem is an out-of-control industry.

So, in state houses everywhere, legislators are passing laws to augment the obviously out-of-control financial industry, right? They are doing this just like they are poking into other federal matters, right?

Nope, they are going after the real culprits of this economic crisis. Who are the real culprits, you ask? Well of course they are the teachers, engineers, firemen social workers and policemen. While the purveyors of collateralized debt obligations and other financial instruments designed to move money from our wallet to theirs continue to make billions in bonuses, state houses are teaching government employees a lesson.

After all, those tens of dollars teachers make every day should offend the others in the working class. Sick days, retirement and expense pay are all sophisticated financial instruments designed to take money from working class who pay their salaries. I’m beginning to hate those government employees. I hope those politicians get them because they deserve it. They should leave those poor hedge fund managers are just trying to eek out a living alone.