Capitalism causes foreclosure

The movie Capitalism: A love story is anything but a love story. Anyone who has watched Michael Moores productions realizes that the producer has not been in friendly terms with capitalism for a while. Perhaps he had a crush on capitalism early as a child while living in Flint, Michigan. This is because his father worked in the General Motors (GM) assembly line. At the time, GM was the lifeline of the country and the largest employer in the country. GM would later announce the laying-off of thousands of working in a move that would see most of the labor intensive production activities relocated in Mexico. This set Moore in his quest to tackle the corporations and big businesses beginning with the auto industry in his first movie, Roger, and Me. Moores quest was clear from the very beginning, his intentions is to give voice to the voiceless. In his quest to tackle the problem a poor population in a resource-gifted nation, he has decided to go after the system in its totality in his new movie, Capitalism: A love story.
Capitalism causes foreclosure

Moores timing could not be better as many of the citizens across the country confirm in the documentary movie and in headlines and blogs. Millions of people are unemployed, underemployed, and fed-up. Moore makes it clear for America from the beginning, if it continues with the current trend it is going down the chronological toilet like other historical empires, such as the Roman Empire. Despite the documentary alluding to ancient roman at the beginning, the story of capitalism truly begins after the end of World War II. Moore was born during this period. Children born during this period are referred to as the boomer generation (Wolff 10). The middle-class in the country was prospering because of industrialization; however, the collective dream referred to as the American dream soon began to fizzle down. The first cue was the Vietnam War. What follows is an increase in household debt, union busting, and protest, such as the move released by Moore (Moore & Grimm 477).
In the movie Capitalism, Moore repeats his signature move as he does in other earlier movies, such as Roger and Me. One Moore trademark move than is common in his movie is his attempt to enter a building and speak with corporate or government leaders. Although he attempts to speak truth to the powers, mostly, he encounters guards and public relation officers just trying to do their jobs. This is barely amusing for the most part, because in his attempt to help he places the jobs of those in encounter at considerable risk (Wolff 79). The effective scenes in the documentary are those that do not use humans as props. It is more ethical when he conveys his message through interviews with people abused by the system. In one of the interview segments, he visits a man whose wife died a while back and was insured by the employee with the company named as the beneficiary (Dargis). Although most of the interviews in the movie are not news for those who follow the news, it makes for irritating viewing.
After watching this movie, it is not clear what point Moore intents the American people to grasp. While he is clearly suggesting that Capitalism is an evil in the society, he does not suggest an alternative. The story that Moore conveys of Capitalism is not the same as was conceived by Karl Marx. This is not the story of contemporary capitalism that has come to dominant the world. The movie is not a call to action because as Moore suggests in the movie, he would like the American people to vote (Moore & Grimm 483). This implies that he has sufficient faith in the current system to consider that change would be possible without changing it. Roosevelt form president of the United States sums up the issue as calls for a second bill of rights in 1944. According to Roosevelt, it is impossible to achieve individual freedom without economic independence and security. While Roosevelt appealed to the American conscience and mapped out prosperous path, it remains elusive (Lawson 57).
The problem facing the American people today was evident to some of the leaders early ensure to avert this catastrophe. In 1979, Jimmy Carter who was the president warned the American people of over indulgence in consumption and the dangers that accompany it. During the time, American was in the golden days and no one was willing to listen to him. Don Regans policies continued the country running down the wrong path. The big corporation had more political power, workers unions were weakened, and economic gap widened. Moore discusses the relationship between capitalism and Christianity. He considers the nature of capitalism converse to Christianity (Dargis). Citigroup leaked internal memo is the best representation of how capitalism functions. A leaked Citigroup internal memo declares the United States a plutonomy. This is a country were the economic operations and wealth are controlled by very few people who wield most of the economic power. In the United States, 1% of the population control more wealth than 95% or rest.
 The current system has the young focused on acquiring more wealth and using the tools available to them to achieve this instead of studying and focusing their efforts for the betterment of humanity. The results of focusing the young minds on making more money are most evident in Wall Street, as Moore finds out when he visits Wall Street to get technical explanation about how credit interest rates are derived. What he finds are complex systems and terminologies that are designed to confuse the common Americans and steal from them in broad daylight. The complex system is not applied uniformly as a former employee of countrywide financial reveals. The financial companies have VIP packages for congress members and other prominent politicians. The disturbing issue with this relationship between the politicians and major corporations is the 2008 bailout. After Wall Street investment companies and big banks in the country were facing liquidity, the government came to their rescue with a $700 billion bailout plan. No one seems to know where the money is including the head of the US Congressional Oversight Committee (Moore & Grimm 485).
Examining the financial crisis with a clear head reveals there are several contributing factors. Between 2002 and 2004, the Federal Reserve Bank held banks at an interest loan of below one percentage. This resulted in a negative rate for the reserve and encouraged the commercial banks to make risky loans. This is what led to the massive foreclosure. This is a market dysfunction only to the extent that lenders in the housing sector give mortgages to people without clearly evaluating the payment mechanisms (Novak 40). The multi-trillion dollar bubble debt resulting in the real estate market is for the most part a government failure. Loose fiscal policies allowed loose monetary policies that lead to the financial crisis. While it is easy to believe that George W. Bush spending, especially in the defense and homeland industries, led the country into debt, but these increases only account for 40% of increased spending when adjusted for inflation. Major sectors including education, Medicare, and infrastructure development grew by more than 50% during the same period.
    The United States is addicted to government interventions in a time of crisis. This is especially true for the last century during the great depression. During the great depression, the government enacted a new deal that was meant to end the depression; however, the seven years following the launch of the new pact, the countrys budget was still in turmoil (Lawn 9). The new deal botched to increase the employment rate and compel the financial system out of an entire decade of recession. This is a fact that president Obama overlooked at the inceptions of his presidency and decided to continue with Bushs policies. The free market has the capacity to recover from the recession without the intervention of the government. The failure of the Keynesian interventions is a lesson for the American people (Moore & Grimm 485).
Conclusion
The debt will fade and the recession will fade, however, government spending will never return to pre-recession spending. Higgs, an economic historian argues that research into past recessions reveal that governments experience a permanent increase in spending. Karl Marx envisioned a free market that increased the production capacity of the world but resulted in two conflicting classes. The conflict would eventually lead to socialism that would result from the poor majority seizing the means of production from the rich few. This would eventually evolve into pure communism.



 Works Cited
Dargis, Manohla. Capitalism: A Love Story (2009). The New York Times, 2009. Web. 20 March 2014.
Lawn, Philip. "Is Steady-State Capitalism Viable? A Review of the Issues and an Answer in the Affirmative." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1219 (2011): 1-25.
Lawson, Andrew. "Foreclosure Stories: Neoliberal Suffering in the Great Recession." Journal of American Studies 47.1 (2013): 49-68.
Moore, Stephen & Grimm Tyler. “Straw Man Capitalism and a New Path to Prosperity.” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 33.2 (2010): 475-486
Novak, Michael. "An Apology for Democratic Capitalism." First Things 189 (2009): 39-42.
Wolff, Rick. "Teaching Capitalism's Crisis." Radical Teacher 87 (2010): 10,18,79.