'CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY'

'CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY' - In Theaters October 2nd

"It's a crime story. But it's also a war story about class warfare. And a vampire movie, with the upper 1 percent feeding off the rest of us. And, of course, it's also a love story. Only it's about an abusive relationship.
"It's not about an individual, like Roger Smith, or a corporation, or even an issue, like health care. This is the big enchilada. This is about the thing that dominates all our lives — the economy. I made this movie as if it was going to be the last movie I was allowed to make.
"It's a comedy." — Michael Moore.

Check back for updates at http://www.michaelmoore.com/
http://www.capitalismalovestory.com/?bcpid=36912576001&bctid=34800298001



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhydyxRjujU

Michael Moore: Madoff Is a Convenient Distraction for a Bunch of Crooks Who Aren't in Jail

Had Madoff just followed the example of his fellow tycoons, he could have legally multiplied his wealth many times over, legally.

By Michael Moore, Time Magazine.

The following is Michael Moore's entry on Bernie Madoff for Time Magazine's issue of The World's Most 100 Influential People.

Elie Wiesel called him a "God." His investors called him a "genius." But, proving correct that old adage from the country and western song, you never really know what goes on behind closed doors.
Bernie Madoff, for at least 20 years, ran a Ponzi scheme on thousands of clients, among them the people you and I would consider the best and brightest. Business leaders, celebrities, charities, even some of his own relatives and his defense attorney were taken for a ride (this has to be the first time a lawyer was hosed by the client).
We're clearly in one of those historic, game changing years: up is down, red is blue and black is president. Aside from Obama himself, no person will provide a more iconic face of this end-of-capitalism-as-we-know-it year than Bernard Lawrence Madoff.
Which is too bad. Yes, he stole $65 billion from some already quite wealthy people. I know that's upsetting to them because rich guys like Bernie are not supposed to be stealing from their own kind. Crime, thievery, looting -- that's what happens on the other side of town. The rules of the money game on Park Avenue and Wall Street are comprised of things like charging the public 29% credit card interest, tricking people into taking out a second mortgage they can't afford, and concocting a student loan system that has graduates in hock for the next 20 years. Now that's smart business! And it's legal. That's where Bernie went wrong -- his scheming, his trickery was an outrage both because it was illegal and because he preyed on his side of the tracks.
Had Mr. Madoff just followed the example of his fellow top one-percenters, there were many ways he could have legally multiplied his wealth many times over. Here's how it's done. First, threaten your workers that you'll move their jobs offshore if they don't agree to reduce their pay and benefits. Then move those jobs offshore. Then place that income on the shores of the Cayman Islands and pay no taxes. Don't put the money back into your company. Put it into your pocket and the pockets of your shareholders. There! Done! Legal!
But Bernie wanted to play X-games Capitalism, run by the mantra that's at the core of all capitalistic endeavors: Enough Is Never Enough. You have the right to make as much as you can, and if people are too stupid to read the fine print of their health insurance policy or their GM "100,000-mile warranty," well, tough luck, losers. Buyers beware!
It would be too easy -- and the wrong lesson learned -- to put Bernie on TIME's list all by himself. If Ponzi schemes are such a bad thing, then why have we allowed all of our top banks to deal in credit default swaps and other make-believe rackets? Why did we allow those same banks to create the scam of a sub-prime mortgage? And instead of putting the people responsible in the cell block in Lower Manhattan, where Bernie now resides, why did we give them huge sums of our hard-earned tax dollars to bail them out of their self-inflicted troubles? Bernard Madoff is nothing more than the scab on the wound. He's also a most-needed and convenient distraction. Where's the photo on this list of the ex-chairmen of AIG, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup? Where's the mug shot of Phil Gramm, the senator who wrote the bill to strip the system of its regulations, or of the President who signed that bill? And how 'bout those who ran the fake numbers at the ratings agencies, the lobbyists who succeeded in making sleazy accounting a lawful practice, or the stock market itself -- an institution that's treated like the Holy Sepulchre instead of the casino that it is (and, like all other casinos, the house eventually wins).
And what of Madoff's clients themselves? What did they think was going on to guarantee them incredible returns on their investments every single year -- when no one else on planet Earth was getting anything like that? Some have admitted they did have an inkling "something was up," but no one really wanted to ask what it was that was making their money grow on trees. They were afraid they might find out it had nothing to do with gardening. Many of Madoff's victims have told investigators that, over the years, they have made much more than the original investment they gave Bernie. If I buy a stolen car from the guy down the street, the police will take that car from me regardless of whether I knew it was stolen. If I knew it was stolen, then I go to jail for receiving stolen property. Will these "victims" give back their gains that were fraudulently obtained? Will the head of Goldman Sachs reveal what he was doing at the meetings with the Fed chairman and the Treasury secretary before the bailout? Will Bank of America please tell us what they've spent $45 billion of our TARP money on?
That's probably going too far. Better that we just put Bernie on this list.

Obama's Economic Plan: A Version of the Monopoly Game, But No One Loses

It's very much like the regular Monopoly game -- only better -- because this one uses real money, provided courtesy of the taxpayers.

By William Greider, The Nation.

AlterNet

President Obama has invented a new board game for Wall Street money guys to play that promises to be a lot of fun. It's very much like the regular Monopoly game that kids play -- only better -- because this one uses real money, provided courtesy of the taxpayers. The best thing about Obama's game is nobody loses. Usually, the winner in Monopoly is the one who winds up with the most money. In the Obama version, the losers get any losses back from the government at the end of the game. The president has promised.
The guy is a genius. He located these two whiz kids -- Tim and Larry -- who are smarter than God about financial matters. President Obama commanded the advisors to solve the financial mess, raise the zombie banks from the dead and start the good times rolling again. This game is what they came up with. It's a very complicated game and not everyone can understand it. But the Wall Street titans smell hope. For this Monopoly set has no "Go to Jail" card in the deck.
It starts just like the real Monopoly game. The president hands out tall stacks of cash to all the players -- hedge funds, insurance companies, big-time investors, any well-heeled capitalist with a serious taste for acquiring greater wealth. The players then roll the dice and move their little titan icons around the Monopoly board. They can buy up properties wherever they land, sort of like landing on Boardwalk and Park Place. Only in this case the properties are the nearly worthless financial assets held by the country's leading banks, like the mortgage-backed securities now known as "toxic assets."
The banks are glad to be rid of their rotten stuff and will begin to feel better about lending again to commoners. The titans accumulate a stack of property cards and sell them off to other players at extraordinary profits. At least this is what Tim Geithner and Larry Summers told the president to expect and he believed them. Before you know it, everyone will start feeling better about themselves. The once worthless financial paper that no one would buy will begin glowing with rising value. Now wealthier titans and much relieved bankers will buy more cars and houses, hire more gardeners. More jobs, more hope, everything starts rolling toward national recovery. Everyone is a winner, even the losers.
Only adults are allowed to play this game. It is much too complicated for ordinary citizens so sophisticated financiers are needed to do such tricky deals. But Americans at large can have fun watching the action and rooting for various participants. The contest will be a welcome distraction from other anxieties. Who is going to accumulate the tallest stack? It's like Monopoly Olympics for the grand masters of the universe. Will Warren Buffett take a seat at the table? Bill Gross, the PIMCO bond king, is salivating at the prospect of double-digit returns and says Obama's game is "win-win-win." Can billionaire George Soros resist such an opportunity? Will legendary traders at Goldman Sachs square off against James A. Baker III's Carlyle Group with its oil-rich Arab backers? What a kick that these famous people will be playing with our money.
But, remember, this is not about a few shrewd players accumulating more wealth. It's about saving the country. Everybody will want to do their part. Obama has shown them the way.
Probably there are some naysayers in the public who won't get it. They will whine about the odd ways in which winners always seem to get another chance in US capitalism to win again. Some people will look around them and complain that things do not seem to be improving in their neighborhood. They will attack our president personally, try to undermine his authority.
President Obama can charm them out of their anger. He might say, "Hey, guys, lighten up. It's only a game."

Bank of America: Bad for America

Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films

AlterNet

Squandering $25 billion in bailout bucks.

Bank of America is spending like a drunken sailor, but not on anything that will serve as a life raft for our drowning economy. The largest bank in the US received a whopping $25 billion in bailout funds from our government, but has invested $7 billion in an overseas bank and dropped another $10 million on DC lobbyists.
It gets much much worse. The company employs 247,000 workers, but won't foot the bill for their healthcare, worth an estimated $50 million that's coming out of public funds (on top of the bailout). And since the government wrote Bank of America a $25 billion check, the company announced plans to layoff 35,000 workers over the next three years -- a record for the financial industry. These are workers whose median salary was only about $23,000 to begin with. Meanwhile, the company is still flying their executives around on a fleet of nine corporate jets worth over $200 million alone.
To say nothing of Bank of America's predatory lending practices, the fact that they own Countrywide, the company responsible for the subprime crisis, or that they are dead set against federal legislation that would help mortgage borrowers avoid foreclosure. And oh yeah, the Wall Street Journal just reported the Treasury is planning to give Bank of America billions more!
With such flagrant corporate greed, it's no wonder the SEIU is up in arms. My only question is, why aren't the rest of us?

In a national day of action today, the SEIU took on Bank of America at their headquarters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Charlotte. Mac D'Alessandro, the SEIU's political director for the New England area, told me that about 100 people braved the bitter cold on Boston's Federal Street to pass out flyers to employees and passersby, who, for the first time D'Alessandro could recall, eagerly accepted them. When the group attempted to present Bank of America with a giant STOP PAYMENT check, however, they were cordoned off by police. "The biggest shock though," said D'Alessandro, "was that no one from corporate bothered to come down and accept the check."
Bank of America might have bounced the SEIU's novelty check today, but the SEIU certainly won't be thwarted. Today's action was part of a much broader campaign to mobilize activists around the country and pressure Bank of America to use its bailout billions properly. And you can join by telling Bank of America to help its workers and fix the economy or kindly give its bailout back.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCfS6Pj_qh4