I saw this movie with a woman who did
not normally read the business news, and her reaction was that Moore
only showed negative consequences, he did not explain how things
happened. I agree that Moore's intention was to incite class
hatred,
rather than to inform. It was two hours of non-stop vilification.
A few things:
Pilot Pay:
Moore went on and on about how little airline pilots are paid.
The
fact he quoted was that beginning pilots on American Eagle are paid
$20K a year.
Lots of people want to be pilots, the pay if you're flying a large
plane is reasonable to good, but you have to log a lot of hours to be
qualified to do that. To get those hours, you have to work many
years
for practically nothing as a flight instructor or flying small planes,
basically as an apprenticeship. Eventually an experienced captain
of a
jumbo jet will make over $200K. Moore doesn't talk about that --
the
fact that he raves about the low pay of beginning pilots without
mentioning the high pay of experienced pilots is such a grave omission
that it's basically a lie, or at least a major distortion. Source
on
pilot's pay:
http://www.fool.com/community/pod/2000/000522.htm
Foreclosures:
He spends 20-30 minutes on this one couple being evicted from a farm in
the Midwest they'd lived on for 40 years. A few questions come to
mind: if they'd been there for 40 years, why wasn't the farm paid
off?
Most mortgages are for 30 years. If they'd taken out huge equity
loans on
the farm, then it wasn't their farm any more, was it? Lots of
people
would like to live on a farm, but they have to live in apartments or
trailers to make ends meet. If this couple was finding themselves
strapped for cash, they should have sold the farm and moved into
cheaper accommodations rather that just sitting there waiting to be
foreclosed upon.
The devastation of Michigan:
There was a feeling of deja vu for those of us who had seen "Roger
& Me" as he spent a lot of time talking about how the Michigan auto
industry was devastated. It never seems to occur to Moore that
the
reason Michigan's auto industry got so wiped out was that
aggressive
unions had undermined its global competitiveness.
Priests:
Moore interviews a lot of clergy who tell us how profoundly "evil"
capitalism is. Interestingly, he does not interview any
Evangelicals,
only Catholic priests.
I do not disagree, however, that Jesus had a negative attitude toward
the wealthy. He lived centuries before anyone said anything
intelligent about economics. He thought the end of world was
going to
happen in a very short time, so he was not the least bit concerned
about productivity or job creation. Pretty much everything he
said
about economics was counterproductive. Catholics are more
faithful to
Jesus's messages about economics than Protestants, there was a
re-thinking about the subject in the Protestant Reformation called the
"Protestant Work Ethic" that reconsidered these values and resulted in
a great increase in productivity in the Protestant countries.
The Clown:
Moore spends a lot of time interviewing some red-headed bearded guy who
I didn't recognize and who I don't remember being introduced. He
said
that Wall street served no productive function, in fact their function
was totally destructive. He said Obama's Treasury secretary
Timothy
Geithner had been a screw up in every job he'd had before nomination,
and that Geithner's only qualification was a willingness to tell his
bosses whatever they wanted to hear, however absurd. I was really
wondering who this clown was, and what his qualifications were, other
than a willingness to tell Moore whatever he wanted to hear, however
absurd.
Having followed the business news, it was amazing to hear that Geithner
was so unqualified. Wall Street was quite happy with him -- if
Obama
had picked someone unqualified for such an important position at such a
crucial time, there would have been a lot of alarm about it in the
marketplace and in the news.
Wall Street's function is not "totally destructive". It is where
decisions are made about which companies are going to survive and which
are going to fail.
Derivatives:
Moore asserts that derivatives are "deliberately difficult to
understand to avoid regulation" and interviews some boob who can't
coherently explain what an option is. I can assure you, the
people who
trade in derivatives generally understand them, it's very unwise to
trade in derivatives you don't understand. I've been paid
handsomely with stock options,
it's an excellent way to provide incentives to workers in a start-up.
The Advisors:
Moore makes a big deal talking about how much money many of the
economic advisors had been paid prior to being appointed, as though
that were a disqualification for office. I want the best
financial
minds in the world in those jobs, and one sign of being one of the best
financial minds in the world is having made millions of dollars.
Moore extensively vilifies Goldman-Sachs, and makes a big deal of the
fact that Henry Paulson, Bush's Treasury Secretary, and many of his
advisors, worked there. For one thing, Goldman-Sachs came through
the
housing bubble better than any of the other big banks and was the least
in need of being bailed out. For another, there's nothing wrong
with
people who've worked in the private sector taking jobs in government.
Vikram Pandit:
Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup, was among the bankers vilified by
this movie. Pandit did not assume control of Citigroup until
AFTER his predecessors had made a mess of it, and he is currently being
paid $1 a year in compensation.
The Bailout:
Moore really goes out on a limb, saying there really was no financial
emergency, there was no risk of the economy sliding into a depression,
it was all a hoax concocted by Bush to justify the bailout and thereby
steal taxpayer's dollars. This is totally disconnected from
reality.
For one thing, much of the bailout money has been returned to the
government at this point, so if it was theft, it wasn't a very
effective way to steal. For another, the bailout was terrible
news for
the Republicans -- it all but guaranteed a victory for the Democrats in
the elections, both presidential and congressional, whereas before it,
McCain had a fighting chance. Most
of
the resistance to the bailout in congress came from Republicans.
Moore
interviews some female congresswoman, a blithering idiot, who said it
was very "suspicious" that the whole thing happened so shortly before
an election. I don't see how being before an election HELPED pass
the
bailout, when 90% of the phone calls congress was receiving about the
measure were against it. The congressmen voted AGAINST what their
constituents were overwhelmingly telling them to do. They did it
because the alternative was to be eventually held responsible for
disaster. When Fed chairman Ben Bernanke announced the need for
the
bailout to a bunch of congressmen, one of the first questions they
asked was "Can't this wait until after the election?".
For that matter, if the bailout was an evil Republican plot, why did
Obama vote for it?