Anybody else get to see this yet? It would like to be to the federal deficit what An Inconvenient Truth was to global warming. Truth managed to be more than just a ecology lecture by the ever stiff Al Gore, IOUSA really doesn't get much beyond a quick Econ 101 lesson -- and it reminds me why I never took Econ.

To be sure, the numbers are mind boggling. And I don't doubt that there is real danger lurking (especially it seems to me in our disastrous trade imbalance.) But I'm not quite as sure that the disaster is as certain as global warming seemed after watching Truth.

My brother-in-law (who does understand these things) went to one of the events for the opening of the film that had live via satellite feeds with people like Warren Buffett commenting after the film. He reports that Buffett (who really understands these things) downplayed the urgency that the film would like us to have.

By the way, your share of the debt (if you live in America) will $184K in January. But don't worry, your grandkids will pay for it. Glad you got that tax rebate now?

I haven't seen the film, but I was wondering in light of what's happened in the past four weeks if Buffett would still downplay the urgency. I'd also be interested, Darrel, if your thoughts have changed reguarding this film?

Well, the bailout (if passed) likely will add to the debt. (Certainly it will in the short term, but much or even all of the bailout debt could be paid back). If the number I heard about a week ago ($200B) is approximately what it will really cost, that's less that another $1000/person, which at this point what does that matter?

I don't think the national indebtedness is that central to the current credit crunch because so much of our debt is held by foreigners (China, Saudi Arabia, ...)

The film I think has a more pertinent bearing is Maxed Out, which focused on credit card debt and the preditory practices of credit card companies. If that same mindset was shifted to mortgages, that would give a new understanding of the subprime mess.

Okay. It almost seemed that this film might have the same charmed timing of release that The China Syndrome had experienced. That film opened just three weeks prior to the Three Mile Island accident, and got a lot more press and business because of it. I thought that perhaps I.O.U.S.A. may have been as prescient, but I hadn't seen any press recently saying that the film ought to be sought out.

Baal_T'shuvah wrote:
: It almost seemed that this film might have the same charmed timing of release that The China Syndrome had experienced. That film opened just three weeks prior to the Three Mile Island accident, and got a lot more press and business because of it.

FWIW, another, more fiscally minded, example might be Oliver Stone's Wall Street, which opened December 11, 1987, less than two months after Black Monday (October 19, 1987), which remains to this day the largest single-day percentage loss in Dow Jones history. (The 508 points lost that day have since been dwarfed by the 554, 684 and 777 points lost in October 1997, September 2001, and earlier this week, respectively -- but the 508-point loss represented a 22% loss in 1987, whereas those other loses were all in the 7% range. The second-largest single-day percentage loss ever was the 38.3 points, or 12.8%, lost on October 28, 1929.)