Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail.

The cast was right out of a Robert Altman film, there was a large number of well known actors including William Hurt (Paulson – Sec. Treasury), James Woods (Fuld – Lehman Bros), Paul Giamatti (Bernanke – Chair, Federal Reserve), Bill Pullman (Dimon – JPMorgan Chase), Ed Asner (Buffet – Berkshire Hathaway), Billy Crudup (Geithner – President, Federal Reserve), Matthew Modine (Thain – CIT Group), Tony Shalhoub (Mack – Morgan Stanley), Topher Grace (Wilkinson), Cynthia Nixon (Davis), and many others. They all looked and played their parts very well with the exception that there seemed to be no effort made toward sounding like the people they played. It was difficult to get past the notable voices of the actors. Paul Giamatti sounds like Paul Giamatti and nothing like Ben Bernanke. Hurt sounded nothing like Paulson. Crudup nothing like Geithner. Perfection wasn’t necessary, but it seemed as though there was little to no effort made at all by the actors to at least sound a little more like the real people they were portraying and less like themselves.

The story opens on a  shot of Ronald Reagan. It is news footage of a speech he gives on deregulation. Credits play as we see an image of Clinton signing a piece of legislation as the audio of newsmakers make mention that this is Congress’ bill being singed. Alan Greenspan is seen and states, “Don’t regulate for regulation’s sake,” which is followed by Bush proclaiming everyone should live out the American dream and own their own home. Miscellaneous clips talks of high profits and subprime loans, and then mortgage meltdown and government bailout.

At this point, I am thinking this film is going to be about blame… and that blame is going to be deregulation ushered in by Reagan, the Republican Congress during the Clinton years, Bush 43, and Reagan through Bush’s Federal Reserve appointee, Alan Greenspan.

This prompts me to check the cast and crew to see who they support and if they are bringing their agenda to this story in their hopes to rewrite history and put Republicans in a negative light and Democrats in a positive light before the election in 2012. And, of course, the Director and the Writer are both ardent Obama supporters. All those at HBO support Obama like Co-President Eric Kessler, Co-President Richard Plepler, President of HBO entertainment Sue Naegle, President of HBO Films Len Amato and Executive Producers Paula Weinstein, Carol Fenelon, and Ezra Swerdlow. Even the Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau and Casting Director Alexa Fogel have contributed to Obama’s 2008 campaign. And the Obama supporting list of actors is long too: Topher Grace, William Hurt, Matthew Modine, Cynthia Nixon, and Amy Carlson. As if that’s not enough, there are many other ardent left-wingers like Paul Giamatti, Bill Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, and Ed Asner.

Then the story opens on James Woods playing Dick Fuld, Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers… an ardent Democrat and Obama supporter. James Woods stands out as the political maverick in the cast. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Woods is quoted as saying, “I’ve always said that the next Obama slogan should be, ‘Barack Obama: Putting America Out of Business,’ because that’s what he’s doing.” So I decided to turn off my bias filter and give this story a chance.

As the story unfolded, I saw that the villains in this film weren’t the Republicans, rather it was a single villain… the total and complete financial collapse of our nation, or as Bernanke puts it, “[replaying] the depression of the 1930s. Only this time… far, far worse.” So, regardless of any one American’s political affiliation watching this film, total and complete financial collapse is an enemy we can all collectively desire to defeat.

The heroes, however, that’s a little more complicated. The actual heroes of the story are Republicans Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury), Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve), and Independent Timothy Geithner (President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York). They artfully maneuver their way through the minefield of economic collapse. Bear Stearns has already collapsed, Lehman Brothers is on the brink, Merrill Lynch next, and with all this going on, AIG – the safety net for all these creditors – was in the process of imploding from its own lack of liquidity and inability to meet its obligations. If AIG falls, all the banks fall. People would pull their money out of their banks and there would be no George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) trying to stop the “run on the bank” by convincing his depositors to take only what they need from his honeymoon stash. America, as we know it, would be in ruins.

Every maneuver in their quest to stabilize the markets is met with unpredictable reactions. Once they believe they’ve averted disaster, the pundits, investors, and citizens react differently than expected. It’s a reminder of Nobel winning economist F.A. Hayek’s precept that, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

But in the end, as we all know, it was capital injections in the form of a Troubled Asset Relied Plan (TARP) that would “save the day.” In short, the plan would see the U.S. government purchase assets and equity from all financial institutions, even if they didn’t need it, in order to stabilize and strengthen the financial sector. As Bernanke put it, the upside would be stabilizing banks faster, the downside would be nationalizing a few banks. Their plan to soften the blow was that they would force private banks to participate in this plan under law, but that the government would not have a voting interest or the ability to tell the banks how they use the money injected into their coffers… leaving the question to the viewer, “They will lend it out, won’t they?”

But, was TARP the right solution? If one believes it was, then the heroes of this story are without a doubt Republicans Paulson and Bernanke. But, if one believes it wasn’t the right solution, then the Republicans are just kicking the can down the road. Regardless, the story is a quest for a private solution, according to Paulson.

As Republican public relations guru Jim Wilkson (Topher Grace) says at one point, “You just can’t hand the banks massive piles of cash. Nobody’s going to go for it. To the Republicans, it’s nationalization. To the Democrats, it’s a bailout. And the banks are going to go ballistic.”

The story is well crafted and builds suspense out of the unexciting topics of finance and economics. There were parts that bothered me, like making the Republican Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, look like an immature boob, or Republican presidential candidate Senator McCain look like he is clueless on economic matters contrasted by Senator Obama’s grip on the subject, or simplistically blaming deregulation while omitting the fault of Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, or that derivatives and subprime loans were born during Clinton’s presidency, or more importantly that in 2006 Republicans pleaded with the Democratically-controlled Congress to begin taking measures by pulling the reigns back on Fannie and Freddie to mitigate the impending economic disaster.

Those criticisms, however, were offset by so many of the lines delivered by Topher Grace’s character, Jim Wilkson, who best resembled the attitudes and feelings of most Americans during this time. At one point, it is suggested that the government purchases up the toxic assets of the banks, to which he responds, “Ohhh, call it cash for trash,” he also calls nationalization “the N-word” and that it is un-American, and he suggests that the government running the banks would be like the government running the Post Office, which they “run like a dream.” Another character addresses the issue that the government having the ability to dictate compensation would be the biggest “brain drain this country has ever seen.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is characterized as something like the head of the Mafia. Her character comes across as an elitist snob, which I particularly enjoyed.

The movie was a surprise. Although it wasn’t 100 percent balanced, it was enough for this right-winger to actually enjoy it. And the filmmakers did a pretty decent job packing in a lot of characters and a lot of story into a short amount of time. If Obama-loving HBO can pull off the upcoming Sarah Palin story, Game Change, and the Dick Cheney movie, Angler, with the same deftness and fairness, I will be pleasantly surprised.  Better yet… I will be astonished.

Regardless, this might help explain the post below (and Saturday’s “Restore Sanity” rally), why Stewart found Republican victories so much more high-larious than the Dems losses…

Satirist, Economist

Per Bloomberg, here’s more evidence of just how co-opted Jon Stewart is and pathetic the Obama administration’s become — off-the-record meetings with our nation’s Treasury Secretary “to discuss the economy“:

In the midst of debates on financial regulation and China’s currency in April, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner sat down to discuss the U.S. economy — with comedian Jon Stewart.

Geithner and Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” held an off-the-record meeting at Stewart’s office in New York on April 2, according to Geithner’s appointments calendar, updated through August on Treasury’s website.

Geithner didn’t stay for a television interview with Stewart although other administration officials — most notably President Barack Obama last week — have turned up for on-camera chats.

“Jon Stewart is influential in America, so we took the opportunity for the two to meet and to discuss the economy,” Treasury spokesman Steve Adamske said in an e-mail yesterday. Stewart’s program has poked fun at Geithner, including a segment last year about the Treasury secretary’s trouble selling his New York home.

Like his anti-Beck rally Saturday, we’re sure Stewart just thought he was helping all of America, not just Obama and the Left.

He’s a moderate satirist, you know.

Kathleen Sebelius didn’t admit to cheating, she claimed that they were “unintentional errors.” I have reason to suspect cheating when all of these unintentional errors just happen to go in one direction. None of these Democrat nominees unintentionally overpay taxes or claim too little on their charitable donations. Like Franken vs. Coleman, the errors always seem to go one way.

Number two in command, Joe Biden, told us that paying taxes is patriotic. So why are these cabinet nominees so unpatriotic? Never have patriots been so stingy or joyless in providing proof of their allegiance to country.

Sebelius is most rabid pro-abortion governor in the country. Even late-term abortion doctor George R. Tiller has proudly donated over $38,000 to her campaigns over the years. If you’re unfamiliar with Tiller’s work, watch this:

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So you’ll have to excuse me if I get extra-happy that Sebelius made “unintentional errors” on her taxes. It’s like going after Al Capone. If we can’t generate enough disgust for Sebelius over her radical position on late-term abortion, I’ll settle for removing her from the nomination for being a tax cheat.

Barney Frank I ain’t touchin’… I’m not a homophobe; I simply suffer from an irrational childhood fear of Elmer Fudd.

And Nancy Pelosi?  I’m sending my friend Andrew Breitbart in to cross-check her hard into the glass.  (I know he’s been dyin’ to get the go-ahead.)  I am certain that if I confronted her, she would hit me with that death ray from those Neutronium eyeballs of hers…the same ones that hypnotize the Washington press corps into not busting up every time she opens her mouth.

But seriously, folks.  I don’t know why anyone’s surprised.  Obama for two years told us what he’s all about.  Made it clear as day.  And everyone just sort of…looked the other way. ”Oh, he’s not a socialist!  He’s just saying those things to keep the far left loonies happy.  You watch, he’ll govern from the center.”

Oh really?  Well, it’s been only two months and let’s take a look at what he’s done.  (Everybody follow along, and please feel free to add anything I’m missing.)

Mr. Obama took Mr. Bush’s bad idea of hundred-billion dollar bailouts and ran with it – on steroids.  When Bush’s bailout did nothing to revive the ailing economy, did our new president say, “Wait, that doesn’t work – let’s try something else.”

Uh…no.  Instead he figured that because having taxpayers borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from Communist China and handing it over to banks, insurance companies and auto giants to ‘stimulate’ economic activity didn’t do any of that…why he should just go ahead and quadruple the amount and try again!  That outta do it!

Then, more than half of his cabinet appointees turn out to be either tax cheats or plagued with scandal.  (The same people who are hell-bent to raise our taxes and ‘keep us honest’.)

Obama goes on You Tube and does a touchy-feely Neville Chamberlain appeasement stance with Iran’s Ahmadinejad, a man from a culture who views such behavior as weak and womanly (sorry – it’s actually an insult to women to call Barry womanly; my wife could kick his ass), doing a pathetic Rodney King “C-c-can we…can we just get along?” with the Iranian psychopath.

Then, his choice for Treasury Secretary, the one man, apparently, uniquely suited to fix the ailing economy, Tim Geithner, lays out plans to regulate all of American business; and in effect, give the Obama administration carte blanche power to inject it’s will directly into any private business it deems necessary, and for any reason whatsoever.

So…let’s get this into perspective.  The guys from government, the people who can’t make the post office run well, the folks who have never owned a business themselves…are now going to oversee, regulate, and in essence meddle with the mainspring of American progress – private businesses.

Just yesterday, Mr. Obama took that little power adjustment for a spin – and promptly fired the head of General Motors.  Did he consult with the stockholders in a hastily constructed shareholders’ meeting?  Take a vote?  Ask for comments?  Show of hands?

No.

Too bad the phrase “a confederacy of dunces” is already taken, or I’d be tempted to use it here.

But …we’re told by the press there’s a “crisis of unprecedented proportion”, one that “the markets can’t fix.”   And my fav… “only the Federal government can fix this crisis.”  Reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s nine most terrifying words in the English language, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”  (Also – Jackie Chan getting his ass kicked in Shanghi Noon, and Owen Wilson, trying to help, making it worse, and Chan shouts, “Stop helping me!!”)  That’s what the American taxpayer is feeling like screaming right now – “Stop helping me!!!!!!”

Obama is a typical Big Government Goon.  The typical BGG has a standard way of dealing with problems.  (And make no mistake, any sort of problem, once it can be stretched and twisted into the concept of being a ‘crisis’, represents one thing, and one thing only:  An opportunity to control, for the ultimate goal to gain personal Power.)

Yes, we underestimated his ambition.  We didn’t think he’d really do all the things he said he was going to do.  (well…in our defense, nothing he said he was going to do was very specific.  Mostly generalities about hope and ‘change’…yeah, close Gitmo…get us out of Iraq…no time limits, but yeah, that was specific.)  But he really meant it that he was going to change this country.  Just… no one actually believed he meant he was going to change this country into something completely unrecognizable from anything we’ve ever known.  (At least those of us who have never lived behind the Iron Curtain, or known the horrors of a despotic dictatorship.)

But look at who Obama’s mentors have been all his life – A Black liberation theologist, Reverend Wright… two avowed Marxists, Saul Alinsky and Noam Chomsky… and an unrepentant terrorist bomber, Bill Ayers.  Obama came up through the ranks of the Chicago political system, the most corrupt group of hacks, con artists and extortionists in the country.  And rather than learning the American dream in the business community, Obama learned how to intimidate, manipulate, and scam the system as a ‘Community Organizer’.  (This term, for reasons unclear to this columnist, seems to hold some sort of nobility, carrying with it a misplaced virtue that is the substance of…smoke.   And mirrors.)

So, the good B. Hussein Obama organized within the communities.  But, organized them…to do what exactly?  Find funds.  Get money.  Guilt various businesses and branches of government to yield to white guilt and cough up some dough.  And thus, noble and honorable organizations such as ACORN come into existence.  Strong-arming and intimidation raised to an art form.

But I think Barry is not content.  As arrogant and audacious as he’s already proven to be, I believe we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, sports fans.   No…just as we underestimated the amount of damage he wished to inflict (I’m sorry – social engineering and progress) upon our Constitution, our traditions, our entire American way of life…there’s more to come.

And it’s not going to be pretty.

We apparently are in the most catastrophic economic crisis ever in the history of mankind.  But ya know?  I drove on the freeway this morning and it was pretty full.  People driving their clean, shiny cars off to work.  Dressed nicely, smiling, going about their day.  I saw people shopping in the stores.  They’re going out to dinner.  They’re ordering online.  Commerce is happening.  I do not see hundreds of people begging in the streets.  I have not heard about a single food riot.  No cardboard box cities sprouting up.  Door-to-door begging?  Lawlessness in the streets?  Okay, so it’s a little harder to borrow money, a little harder to refinance your house, or get a loan to buy a new car.

So what??

Does this ‘crisis’ justify transforming the most successful nation in the history of mankind into some socialist Euro-trash model of twisted central-authority collectivist oligarchy??

My fellow Americans…all I can say now is…

Quick!   Before he gets back.  Let’s do it!  We’ve only got eight days.  He’s going on a five-country Apology Tour, meeting with countries upset over 1) the Iraq War, and 2) treatment of enemy combatants at Gitmo.  He’s got a lot of groveling and appeasing to do, but he’s coming back in just over a week, so we’ve got to act fast!  He’s already screwed this nation up almost beyond recognition, and it won’t be easy.  We’ve got to restore our country so that Liberty, not government is the predominant force.  We must re-institute Capitalism as the primary engine of Freedom, and put government back into its proper role – an institution that works for us, not against us.

Breitbart — Hit Pelosi high, she’ll go down like bag of used condoms.  And don’t worry about Barney Frank…I think Lou Ferrigno is going to go have a little ‘chat’ with him.

Way back in October, (you remember October, it was when the Worlds Series was going on), the President was saying unless we slapped down seven or eight hundred billion dollars to get rid of bad mortgages and other “toxic assets” we were going to slide down into the abyss of economic ugliness from which there was no return. We needed to do it, right then! Now! Today! Wait, is this a four day weekend? Ok, we’ll do it Monday. Do you remember?  So we ponied up the dough and that solved the problem, right?

Then change came to Washington and there was change! The new President said that unless we plunked down another nine billion to one trillion were going to slide down into an economic abyss from which there was no return. We needed to do it today, now…I think you get the picture. Do you see the change? It’s subtle, but it’s there, the amount went up by about two hundred billion! That’s change I can believe in.

Now the Wizard of Odd, Tim Geithner says that he wants the private sector to put up another trillion or so to get rid of “toxic assets.” He’s saying that private money is needed to get credit flowing again.

Don’t forget somewhere in there was a budget for everything else that came in around 1.2 trillion and another four or five hundred billion for walking around money.

So here is how I see it from a seventh grade math perspective. To get rid of toxic assets we have put out about to two trillion seven hundred million dollars. To make the math easy, let’s say the average mortgage is 200,000.  So, 200,000 divided into 2,700,000,000,000 equals 13.5 million. Do I have that right?

There are roughly two hundred and seventy million Americans, so at an average of four to a household that equals roughly sixty-seven million households. Let’s say that, and I know this is a high estimate, 75% own a house, and so there would be just over 50 million mortgages in America meaning the government has bought up over one quarter of all of the houses in the country for that amount of money? I ain’t buying it! Where is the money going? Here’s the kicker, I don’t think anybody knows where all the money is going.

Maybe the way to handle the toxic assets is to say that any toxic waste is a problem for the EPA to handle and they could put some guys in bio sits and bury the lot of them somewhere in the Nevada desert. We could get Al Gore to issue a carbon credit and hope the 2010 elections get here before the bill comes due.

Chris Dodd acted swiftly to redirect blame toward the Treasury Dept. for the snafu, and Tim Geithner acted swiftly to stumble over his memory of time lines of discovery and timing on the whole affair; while Maxine Waters, Our Lady of Pure and Noble Purpose, acted swiftly to indignantly demand answers from Chris Dodd, Tim Geithner, and anyone who could point the camera at her microphone.  

President Obama was unavailable for comment, having taken the occasion to act swiftly and get the hell out of Dodge.

Call me stupid, but I’m beginning to sense a pattern here.  The Democrat President and the Democrat House and the Democrat Senate all defend the speed with which these gargantuan spending bills were passed, saying that the current economic crisis is so grave that speed is of the utmost necessity…even though the expenditures don’t even start for another two years. 

So what was the big hurry?

Duh.  The Dems are ‘acting swiftly’ because they know that that is the only way to get this shit rammed through before people catch on to what they’re up to.  The Porkulus Bill was presented and passed so fast that no one even had a chance to read it.  Is that the sort of behavior from our representatives that the forefathers envisioned when they devised these United States?  Does that seem to be the fair and honorable method of providing for the good of the people?

Prez Obama decries the AIG bonuses as outrageous in these perilous economic times…but he has absolutely no problem with hopping on AF-1 with the whole circus in tow and jetting off to California to hob-nob with mega celebs, get his ring kissed by the Governator and do a rock star appearance on the Tonight Show starring Jay Leno…oh yeah, and insult the Special Olympics organization and special needs children everywhere. (“Uh, sir…you can’t really make that remark…you see, you are the President now.”)  

And I’m wondering exactly how many millions of tax payer dollars are paying for the big-O’s penchant for travel every time things heat up a little.  He was quoted as telling a Costa Mesa audience, “Sometimes it sure is nice to get out of Washington!”

“Uh…sir, you’ve only been in office for two months.” 

And half of that he’s spent travelling around the country on …you guessed it, AF-1.   (It’s like he’s got a side bet going with Pelosi on who can log more flight miles before the Easter break.)

And all paid for by…you guessed it….us!   

And speaking of getting’ outta dodge…   How to do dodge pesky questions over whether or not to fire your Treasury Secretary — for a hundred points, and a chance to keep you’re your job approval rating above 50%…

“Uh…. Present.”

Okay.  The Great Socialist Takeover of 2009 is only two months old, and it is definitely much too early to start bandying about words like Impeachment, or Indictment, or High Treason…or phrases like ‘the most corrupt and incompetent administration in the history of the Universe’ and a ‘total embarrassment of the species’… 

I would give that another four months.

But those of us who don’t sport Che T-shirts, who don’t think Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro are heroes and who don’t think a huge, encroaching centralized Federal government spawned by Woodrow Wilson and expanded by FDR, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton was a particularly good thing for the cause of Liberty…

Well, let’s just say we are not surprised that the new Socialist regime of Obama is an abject failure, joke, and debacle. 

I never thought I’d say this is a million years…but I’m almost nostalgic for Bill Clinton.  How’s that for Irony — Obama makes Bill Clinton look like Abraham Lincoln.

This new administration with its Pelosi/Reid/Schumer/Frank/Dodd Congress is the most glaring example of graft and corruption gone wild in America.  And that’s just what we can see after two months!

Imagine for a second what is about to happen as billions (not millions), even hundreds of billions of dollars start to run through the hot little hands of these bureaucrats.  Do you think there is any possibility that some may develop sticky fingers?   When you are appropriating hundreds of billions of dollars…oh then why not just round the sum off by, say a few million?  Who is going to miss a few million bucks when you’re dealing with hundreds of billions?   This scenario…times a thousand?   Now, I’m not suggesting any of our current elected representatives, Federal, State or Local would ever be tempted with the Sticky Finger Syndrome…but there might, I say there just might be a real problem here. 

Storm warnings on the horizon.

Pay attention folks.  Because we are about to witness the biggest money grab in the history of mankind.  The stories of fraud, graft, money laundering, government 3-card Monty, shell games, blackmail, hush money, kick-backs and payoffs are going to start in earnest, and they will be coming at us faster than anyone can keep track of them.

And it will all be happening as “Congress acts swiftly”.  

Ahhh….the sweet culture of corruption.  Where’s the pea, watch carefully… Now which card is yours?  Nothing up my sleeve…

I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime…and I’m old enough to remember when a billion dollars was a lot of money.

Candidate Obama chose to allow Tony Rezko, now an indicted felon, to loan Obama $300,000 to help him buy his big home. The press and Democrat voters thought John McCain’s seven homes – bought without the hint of a graft – was a more important story.

Citizen and candidate Obama chose to remain in the church of Reverend Wright’s, whose diatribes against America are now famous. But, the media and Democrats thought it was more important to demonize President Bush who kept America safe from terror attacks for 7 ½ years.

Senator Obama voted against the Surge. In light of the Surge’s obvious success, did the media call candidate Obama’s judgement into question? No.

So, why is anyone surprised that a number of Obama’s choices for high level governmental posts are ethically-challenged, like Tom Daschle, Tim Geithner, Nancy Killefer and Bill Richardson?

Caught up in their bloodlust for President Bush, Democrats chose to deny the reality of who Mr. Obama truly was: A stunningly inexperienced Chicago-bred politician who had made poor choices, in his associations and judgements.

In politics as in life, you get what you pay for.