Liam Dann: Crashes and shonky deals perfect fit for silver screen

From left, former US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are put under the spotlight by Charles Ferguson. Photo / Representational Pictures.

The Oscar-nominated documentary Inside Job, on screens in New Zealand now, is a bold expose of the mechanics of the global financial crisis.

It tells the story of the market meltdown in a way that will drop jaws of those who haven't kept up with the news coverage. Even for regular readers of the business pages it provides a stark reminder of the scale of the failure we've witnessed and insight into the greed which caused it.

Predictably it will be well attended in coming weeks by fans of Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock and other anti-establishment film-makers.

Its core audience won't bat an eyelid at its failure to acknowledge that capital markets can and still do create a great deal of the comfort and prosperity, which we in the West take for granted.

It is a better film than those of Moore and Spurlock but it is still not a movie you'd expect leaders of the finance sector to watch en masse.

They did though - this week in Auckland and before Christmas in Wellington - at good spirited and ever-so-slightly subversive events hosted by investor and business leader Lloyd Morrison.

Morrison enjoyed the movie and, while recognising its flaws, decided it had an important message for all those involved in the business of business.

Speaking before the high-powered crowd gathered at the Rialto in Newmarket this week, he warned them they might not enjoy the movie but it would give them plenty of food for thought.

The film doesn't pull any punches as it analyses the pre-crash behaviour of the global megabanks and their political connections to Washington.

In New Zealand the worst excesses of the pre-crash years played out largely off-market where most finance companies stayed.

With a couple of exceptions, New Zealanders were not a target for the sellers of the shonky sub-prime derivatives that sparked the crisis.

But as Morrison points out, it was more by good luck than by good design that New Zealand has side-stepped the worst of the crisis.

The Australian banks held firm and Chinese demand for commodities has continued to keep cash flowing into the region.

That will hopefully be the buffer that differentiates our ugly debt position from those in places like Ireland and Greece.

The fact that Inside Job doesn't have much good to say about markets isn't surprising.

It was never going to be part of its brief. That's the case in most pop culture descriptions of the stockmarket.

The wheeling and dealing, the alpha-male culture and the crashes are the topics that make the best drama. It is a shame because there is ample evidence of the wealth that markets create for ordinary citizens when there is a culture of participation - just take a look at the savings records of nations like Australia.

Stories about long-term growth and dividend re-investment just don't capture the imagination of most people.

Those are stories Prime Minister John Key will need to tell eloquently this year if he is to convince voters to trust the market with significant chunks of their state assets.

And, like Morrison, he should acknowledge the story that Inside Job tells. You can bet the opposition won't ignore that elephant in the room.