A Brilliant Conflict

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Disclaimer: I'm a former hedge fund guy.Did I see the crash coming? Yes, but barely. My fund, and a fund I represented, had mucho skin in game tied to domestic interest rates and LIBOR. So, I wanted...willed...all to be fine.Didn't work. 1/6 of all hedge funds crashed, and didn't cost the tax payers a penny. Like a noncompetitive mom&pop restaurant, they were correctly left to fail.Core of crash was three-pronged:1: Federal Reserve: They've created boom/busts for 100 years. How? Just as Soviets couldn't centrally plan the price of a pencil, wheat, or gold, no one on earth can correctly centrally plan the price of money.2: Federal Government: Goes back to the Community Reinvestment Act, forcing banks to lend to people, regardless of credit rating. Hey, I want ALL people to be rich. But, selectively punishing banks for not lending "enough" to certain racial groups is evil, anti-market, and proved to be, destructive. Banks love to lend...love it, and care not of one's race, gender, or sexual orientation. They absolutely do care if one can pay back a loan. Think I cared the race of my clients investing $5 million, $1 million, or even in my entry level fund, $250K? 3: Wall Street(creation of CDOs etc), rating agencies (rated garbage as "A"), and Fannie and Freddie (bought garbage mortgages,and therefore, encouraged them) played huge role in this mess too. But, without items 1 and 2, 3 would have been impossible.

Cherry picking generality while purposely omitting facts does not make for an accurate documentary. Banks "too big to fail" and the collapse of the housing market came as a result of the deregulation of banking which started in 1978 under Reagan. TARP, while very flawed under Obama, was started by Bush. Bush also cut taxes while opting to take the US to war in Afghanistan & Iraq. More spending with less revenue results is a bigger problem. Plenty of mistakes have been make by both sides. The sad reality is that the primary role of an elected official is to raise funds to get re-elected. Doing what's correct is a career ending move. Instead of spending money on this drivel, give that money to charity (not a PAC).

While it's true that more documentation is needed for some of the details presented in Generation Zero, the salient points of the movie can hardly be disputed--crisis budget cutbacks for the U.S. military causing our national defense capability to slip, banks that are "too big to fail" purposely deceiving investors over the quality of the home loans they once issued, etc. Of course, researchers like Michael Barone, Charles Krauthammer, and Newt Gingrich are well-respected and well able to provide documentation for any points they raise. Generation Zero should be regarded as serious history and serious journalism in a very user-friendly and entertaining format.

I can tell by the above reviewers that this film made them angry. The fact that this film succeeded in making people angry, alone, lends it credence on at least SOME level. The claims made that this documentary is propaganda are common to pretty much all documentaries. All documentaries are propaganda even as they are almost never presented as such. This piece of filmmaking takes an approach that is both effective and entertaining while pushing its narrative down a track that is most interesting, indeed. I highly suggest you give it a look.After all, if folks are outraged by it, you can be sure that it has merit. Or, you could be as closed minded as some and use words of the false LEFT/RIGHT paradigm such as "right-wing" or "neocon" or "socialist" or "left-wing".The other option is for you to give the film a look and take from it what you believe to be truthful. That's what I did and I was very entertained. I even learned a little bit.