The other day, I went to catch the show, Capitalism: A Love Story, a documentary film that covers the 2007-2009 financial crisis and the subsequent bail out. It is directed by Michael Moore, a liberal critique who has directed other films like Fahrenheit 9/11.
A group of teenagers must have been deceived by the title of the show as they left the cinema 25 minutes into the show, most probably bored or confused by the issues that were being discussed. Many of the other people in the cinema happened to be Caucasians, who seemed to be more interested with the subject matter of the show compared to the typical cinema-goer.
The show is highly critical of Capitalism and suggests a massive conspiracy to transfer wealth from taxpayers to the banks last September.
It also tries to highlights other issues, a few of which are:
- deliberate sentencing of juvenile in a certain district in order to enrich the privately owned child detention center
- the carefree giving of mortgage loans followed by the ruthless repossession of homes by the banks when the home owners couldn’t pay
- corruption at the highest levels with preferential home loans being given to special VIPs
- poorly paid commercial pilots in the United States ($20k per annual) and how some of them have to take part time jobs or welfare to survive
Some of the issues were the first time that I have heard of. For example, I only realised the difficulty Congress had in passing the US$700 bailout package after watching Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur’s speech for the first time.
If you recall, the first attempt to pass the bill was shot down. And this speech by Marcy Kaptur was made after the bailout package was approved.
While the content might be a bit dry for a lot of people, there were many doses of humor laced throughout the show. There was one instance where Michael tried to make a phone call to Henry Paulson.
Female voice: Hello, Paulson’s office.
Michael Moore: Hi, this is Michael Moore. May I speak to the Secretary, Henry Paulson, please.
Female voice: Sorry, who are you again?
Michael Moore: This is Michael Moore.
Click
Overall, I found the show thought provoking with interesting issues being raised.