Flaw, The

The flaw was there was no ceiling Last year we had three major cinema-released documentaries on the economic crisis. Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, the Oscar-winning Inside Job, and Alex Gibney’s Client 9.

The flaw was there was no ceiling

Last year we had three major cinema-released documentaries on the economic crisis. Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, the Oscar-winning Inside Job, and Alex Gibney’s Client 9. OK, Client 9 was a side story of infidelity, but it was still very much a part of underlying cause to why the US and world economy went into melt down. For a true “big picture” view of the economic situation you need to see Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom’s doc The Shock Doctrine, based on Naomi Klein’s excellent book of the same name. These were by no means the only documentaries on the subject, but were the ones that addressed the situation in ways we, the common man, could understand, which is: there are a lot of selfish, greedy bastards out there feeding off the naïve to cater to their insatiable appetite for money and property.

The Flaw is yet another attempt to explain in simple terms what caused the “credit crunch” and they come to essentially the same conclusion, the greedy rich have been screwing us and not taking any responsibility for their actions. A lot the film’s arguments centre round the property and mortgage market, which was essentially the cause of the economic meltdown. As one of the economists points out: property was the only way for the lower income people to increase their assets and they got the money their money from the rich as loans because the rich weren’t prepared to pay them wages, causing the biggest, and only, real price rise in real estate for a century.

The film clearly explains the system and how it operates (or not), although it is very US-centric the basic principles (or lack there of) are still the same as the UK, and the Gordon Gecko mantra of “Greed is good” is still very much alive despite the amount of suffering it causes and the fewer number of people at the top that are holding all the cash. Intriguing but not totally relevant, and already slightly out of date.