Here are the ratings (% who liked) from Flixster for some of the movies playing this weekend:
90% The Social Network
88% Inside Job
81% Unstoppable
78% MegaMind
78% Jackass 3-D
77% Red
75% Skyline
65% Due Date
65% Morning Glory
64% The Next Three Days
54% Saw 3D
You know The Social Network. But how about the #2 movie, Inside Job? Ever hear of it?
96% of the critics liked it. Rotten Tomatoes rated it 96%. It's narrated by Matt Damon. Feeling out of the loop yet? Why haven't you heard of this movie?
More on obscurity later, but here's the official synopsis:
'Inside Job' is the first film to provide a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused... 'Inside Job' is the first film to provide a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and nearly resulted in a global financial collapse.Through exhaustive research and extensive interviews with key financial insiders, politicians, journalists, and academics, the film traces the rise of a rogue industry which has corrupted politics, regulation, and academia. It was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.
The theme is now not just clear, but tight. Bad things happened. They were not an accident. They were the results of bad people behaving badly. They knew what they were doing. They did them anyway. And to this day, they refuse to acknowledge responsibility.
Think of this movie as what Michael Moore would produce if he had a PhD in economics and a career as a Federal Prosecutor. It's the project of Charles Ferguson, who in fact does have a PhD in political science from MIT (he has also consulted to the White House and the Department of Defense, was a Senior Fellow at Brookings, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations).
You may know Ferguson as the director of No End in Sight, a powerful documentary about the Iraq war. He's confident enough to interrupt an economist and say, 'You can't be serious about that. If you would have looked, you would have found things.' Or to tell a former Bush administration under-secretary of the Treasury, "Forgive me, but that's clearly not true."
Here is a review by A.O. Scott, in the New York Times.
Boston.com calls it "a masterpiece of investigative nonfiction moviemaking -- a scathing, outrageous, depressing, comical, horrifying report on what and who brought on the crisis.
Here's Kenneth Turan's review in the LA Times.
Go see for yourself; see the trailer here.
The Role of Ideology in the Meltdown
There's much to say about this documentary; I'll limit my thoughts to just one--the role of ideas in the meltdown.
In this day and age of neuro-explanations and insistence that only measurable behavior is relevant for management, the role of ideas gets pooh-poohed. Big mistake.
I've written before about the power of strategic doctrine taught in business schools to negatively influence our general business thinking. But after seeing this documentary, I'm newly persuaded. Ideas have huge power: especially when those ideas happen to greatly serve the economic interests of patrons.
In the pharmaceutical industry, it's become well accepted that a researcher or writer who takes money from a drug company is at the very least subject to rules of disclosure. Failure to do so constitutes an immediate presumption of conflict of interest.
Yet somehow, we have never held our nation's leading economists and business school faculty to the same standards. One of the most eye-opening aspects of Inside Job for me was to put this issue front and center.
Some of Fergusons' hardest-hitting interviews are with the elite heads of academic institutions: Frederic Mishkin, a former Fed governor, now at Columbia Business School; his boss Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush; John Campbell, Harvard's economics department chairman; and fellow Harvard economist Martin Feldstein.
They come off, respectively, as incompetent, blustering, inarticulate, and smug. None of them seem to have noticed a disconnect between their laissez-faire ideas and the disasters engineered by those who quoted them; much less any sense of impropriety at the comfortable financial relationships they shared with those very firms.
Somewhere there is a researcher at Harvard Medical School screaming at the injustice of his not being published in NEJM because of some disclosure requirements, while his academic counterparts in business and economics were happily and openly opining on the health of the Icelandic banking system and the liquidity of the US subprime mortgage market, all the while getting very well paid. (Note: b-school profs provide functional consulting services to companies all the time; I don't see that as an issue. This is vastly different; more another time).
Results of the Meltdown
Ferguson touches clearly, albeit briefly, on one enduring outcome of this decades-long debacle--the increased gap in the US between the haves and the have-nots.
In 1976, the richest 1% of Americans had 9% of the income. Now they have 24%. From 1980 to 2005, 80% of the gain in income went to the top 1%. Guess what industry disproportionately accounts for that gain?
But the most significant casualty, I think, is a great old American belief: the belief that you can make it here in the good old USA, land of opportunity, where anyone can be what they want. You don't have to be limited by the circumstances of your birth, like in all those Old World countries.
Sorry: no longer true. By one study, it is harder for someone to get ahead now in the US than it is in Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Spain, and even France. Only Italy and the UK are more class-bound, and I've seen other studies where even the Brits are less sclerotic than we are. That decline in opportunity is another result of greater income disparity. Again, one of the legacies of the financial industry.
You may disagree with a lot of what I've said here. You may think this movie won't change your mind; and since it's extremely hard to change people's minds, you may be right. But if so, may I suggest you owe it to yourself to see it--if only to write back and point out the flaws in the movie.
Follow Charles H. Green on Twitter: www.twitter.com/charleshgreen
However, the article mentions the wealth disparity in the US. Why does no one who decries this phenomenon think of contributing factors beyond certain groups (the wealthy and powerful) being unfair to the "have nots"? Could the following be at least part of the reason we're experiencing more acute wealth differences?
1) In the 60's, more women began going to college.
2) As more women went to college, more of them married men who were on par with their brains and money.
3) As these people who met in colllege (and subsequently in the workplace), got married and had kids, their kids repeated the cycle, and the brains and the wealth became ever more concentrated among a smallish group of people.
4) While the educated were "breeding", the less-educated remained in the same towns, in the same jobs, hanging around with (and having babies with) those who were not going to ever understand a credit default swap.
5) The educated continued to make more money, allowing themselves to be mobile and have babies with and do deals with others in their same economic realm.
Hate to say it, but this is how the world has changed in the past 50 years, and the real progress women and minorities have made has alienated the less mobile, undereducated populace who do not afford themselves the opportunity get the education required to meet those who can help them build wealth.
Unfortunately, it didn't show anywhere around here.
Considering the current fraud and corruption with Wall Street, It’s the best $ 10.00 investment you can make right now. Bring your kids – they have a right to know what happened to their future.
This movie speaks the truth and will ring true to both Republicans and Democrats alike. Every American should watch this movie because Wall Street is not done. Armed with record profits in the midst of a deep recession, they have record amounts of funds to spend on lobbyists, public relations, college professors and deans from Ivy league schools who are on their payroll not to mention an army of employees with an average salary of $600,000 per year, they have the presidency (not just the current president) and congress' scrotum under control. As for the middle class and the poor taxpayers, Wall Street not only wants them to lube up and bend over, they also want the taxpayers to enjoy the often criminal, unconscionable and painful consequences of their actions.
When the working class experienced starvation, they'll take action.
They've accepted loss of jobs, loss of homes, loss of influence on corporations' government, and loss of hope.
But when they experience hunger, they'll take action.
"The peasants are armed and they are angry" -- bumper sticker
http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Rule-Investment-Competition-Money-Driven/dp/0226243176
Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the
Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (American Politics and Political Economy Series
"To discover who rules, follow the gold." This is the argument of Golden Rule, a provocative, pungent history of modern American politics. Although the role big money plays in defining political outcomes has long been obvious to ordinary Americans, most pundits and scholars have virtually dismissed this assumption..."
It's almost impossible to get third-parties on the ballot:
http://www.thelibertyvoice.com/ralph-nader-ron-paul-agree-ballot-access-laws-are-rigged-against-independent-third-party-candidates
Ralph Nader & Ron Paul Agree: Ballot Access Laws are Rigged Against Independent & Third Party Candidates | The Liberty Voice
Bu the Federal Absentee ballot allows write-ins:
http://www.fvap.gov/resources/media/fwab.pdf
FEDERAL WRITE-IN ABSENTEE BALLOT INSTRUCTIONS
It would NOT be easy, but it's possible that a slate of independent or third-party candidates could be elected to Congress and the White House, bypassing the Democrats and Republicans, both beholding to corporations.
President William K. Black would deal with wide-spread financial fraud.