Charles Ferguson says he had "an unfair advantage" in making "Inside Job," his lucid and infuriating documentary about the 2008 economic crisis.

"I have known for quite some time a number of the earliest and most prescient analysts of this problem," he explained in a phone interview from his home in Berkeley, Calif. "I knew somewhat more about it than most people by the time the organic matter started hitting the fan."

An MIT academic and wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned Oscar-nominated filmmaker (for his 2007 Iraq documentary "No End in Sight"), Ferguson had the credentials and connections to bring together an all-star panel of talking heads to lay out what went wrong. In addition to his filmed interviews, Ferguson talked to literally hundreds of other people. His intellectual rigor is a refreshing change from some documentarians' megaphone-to-mouth approach.

Ferguson's film details rampant corruption, naked greed and shameless influence-peddling in the financial sector, contrasting it with the equally vibrant tech sector where unethical behavior isn't as much of a problem.

"There's just a naturally different culture in high technology," he said. "It attracts people who are interested in the way applied science can change the world. Financial services attract people who are interested in money."

"Another difference is that in technology it's pretty clear pretty fast whether things work or not. In finance it's possible to disguise whether things work or not for some period of time, and from some people who are not very sophisticated consumers -- like people who take out mortgages. A third factor is the incredible political and economic power the financial services industry has amassed over the last quarter-century, which it has used to insulate itself from regulation and also from law enforcement." He points out that in the current crisis, not one financial executive has gone to jail. "It's a very dispiriting situation. I hope we can change it."

One of the more disturbing surprises he encountered while researching the film was "the condition of academia, especially the economic discipline," with professors serving as experts-for-hire to the highest bidder. Ferguson saw the beginnings of the problem when he was an academic himself. "What I found was much worse than I expected, and really quite serious."

While his detailed exposé might seem like a likelier subject for a book than a movie, Ferguson feels that he chose the right medium to tell his story: "Many people will watch a film who won't read books about finance."

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186