Caption All Wrong on Professor Samuel Hayes’s Role

I am addressing this message to the arts editor because I did not find an email address for Josef Woodward, who wrote the review of the movie Inside Job in the November 18-25 issue of the Independent.

We found the movie compelling, and Josef’s review adequate except in one regard. I do not know whether he wrote the caption to the photo of Professor Samuel Hayes that appeared with the review, but the caption insinuated that Prof. Hayes was among the “insiders” who are responsible for our nation’s financial collapse. Prof. Hayes’s testimony was in fact one of the strongest supporting arguments for the movie’s theme, and if Mr. Woodward believes otherwise, I can only imagine he left the movie early (very early) or went to sleep during the segment where Professor Hayes appeared.

My husband and I have known Professor Hayes for 45 years, since his early academic post at Columbia’s Graduate School of Business. He is an internationally recognized authority on economics and has had a long and distinguished career. He is a person of outstanding integrity—and his testimony during the movie demonstrated his objective view of Wall Street’s involvement in the financial meltdown that has spread throughout the world.

I expect to see a correction of this erroneous interpretation of Professor Hayes’s contribution to the movie.

Susan Bjork