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.

Well, not really.

And I’ll tell you why.

Normal people hate government.

—–

To me, it’s like women’s basketball. If it’s the only thing on, maybe I’ll watch it. But if I don’t have to, I won’t. So imagine network execs fighting over whether or not to air more women’s basketball – that’s how I feel about government.

So, Rejoicing that we’re now “open for business,” is like being happy your free-loading uncle is staying over, another month.

One EXCEPTION: i’m glad the military families are okay… but their paychecks should never have been in play.

The Dems could have separated that from this other budget crap – but I guess you-know-who didn’t want to.

And so we were able to shave 39 billion off a 3.6 trillion dollar budget.

To give you some idea of the proportion of the savings, imagine the budget as a trip to the sun. The savings got you to a rest stop in North Bergen, New Jersey.

I know that stop.

But watching pols do battle over this sliver kills me. It’s like watching two muggers argue over giving their victim – you – a dime – so you can call a cab home.

Anyway, I hear it’s a win for the Republicans, which reveals a sad truth.

We are all screwed if anyone calls this a win.

We may have cut a tiny bit, but the seeping blob called government still won. And we lose – we, being the folks who work to sustain those who don’t.

by 2021, The public debt will reach 87% of GDP.

And that brings us to Greece.

Not the musical – but the reflection in our mirror.

Tonight:

Tucker Carlson

Lori Rothman

Robert Kelly

John Devore

a great lineup!

Left-wing Politico:

[T]he Civil War wasn’t the only thing on Burns’s mind as he visited Washington. As the budget battle continues in Congress, many lawmakers have discussed cutting off funding for public broadcasting, which has been Burns’s bread and butter for decades. …

“This is a completely foolhardy, unnecessarily partisan attempt at social engineering, of picking on something that they can score points with the base and it doesn’t make any sense and it will come back to hurt people. It won’t be a political hurt immediately, but what we’re talking about is whether we will retain our superiority as a country. That is the question. … If you’re serious about balancing the budget, then go and talk about much more significant parts of it, not a fraction of 1 percent of the whole budget. … People can make arguments about the marketplace, but if your house is on fire at 3 a.m., you don’t call the marketplace. When your road needs plowing, you don’t call the marketplace. The marketplace doesn’t have boots on the ground in Afghanistan. And while I would never suggest that public broadcasting has to do the defense of our country, it actually makes it worth defending.” 

As for the notion that the reporting of such public broadcasting outlets as PBS and NPR skew liberal, Burns says that’s nonsense. 

“This supposed bias, prove it. It may be true that if you line up every journalist in print, on TV, on the Internet that there may be a significant number of left-leaning people, but is their work that? … I don’t think you can start pigeon-holing ‘Sesame Street’ or Fred Rogers into a red-state, blue-state framework.”

Full piece here.

So The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group full of fusspots and nannypants, has asked the government to ban artificial coloring.

According to the New York Times, the group claims the dyes might worsen hyperactivity in some children.

Now the key to that sentence is “might,” and “some.” Meaning you’d find more real science in an episode of Blossom than in a CSPI press release.

A government advisory panel has stated that there’s no proof dyes cause these issues, and even if there was a slight connection, it would be inconsequential. Most of this is anecdotal stories – the medical equivalent of urban legends.

But that doesn’t matter to health crusaders, for they do not care if they’re on the wrong side of statistics. All they need to do is shout, “what about the children,” and assume we’ll fall in line. It’s a ruse not born from concern, but envious disdain for industry, for success.

Health fascists like CSPI hate human creativity, productivity, consumption and exploitation of resources for the betterment of man, because that stuff works. And success is the polar opposite of a watchdog group, where a scold’s only job is to undermine the jobs of others.

In contrast, today McDonald’s just announced the hiring of 50 thousand new workers. By offering economic opportunity to so many people, that corporation saves more lives than CSPI could ever dream of with their shrill pronouncements.

And while some blogs scoff at these “McJobs,” that says more about the smugness of those who blog, than whose who work.

Bottom line: CSPI wants to ban pleasure because they seem incapable of experiencing it. They want food to be as colorless and bland, as the lives they lead.

If they were a cereal, they would be Fiber 1.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobe.

TONIGHT:

Mahsa Saeidi Azcuy

Paul Mecurio

Marc Lamont Hill

The Wrap:

Kevin Spacey credited federally funded arts programs for his successful career and called for the federal government to continue its support for public arts programs.

The Academy Award-winning actor made his remarks Monday at the 24th annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Spacey delivered the speech to a coalition of organizations who are in the to the nation’s capitol this week to participate in Arts Advocacy Day.

He related his own story of growing up as a child from South Orange, New Jersey, from a modest background with a lack of self-confidence. He got a major boost at age 13 when he was asked to perform a scene in a play and actor Jack Lemmon praised his performance and encouraged young Spacey to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

“I would never had had that experience If I had not grown up at a time when there was enormous support for the arts in the United States,” Spacey said.

We fund the arts, we fund abortions, we fund NPR and PBS, we fund public unions that work against our own interests…

Is it 2012 yet?

Last week my wife and I took our kids, 13 and 11, to see Petty and the Heartbreakers. Having seen them a few times before, they put on a predictably tremendous show, (though doing “Jammin’ Me” and “Change of Heart” would have been great). Mike Campbell, Petty, and crew belted out raw, old fashion rock and direct, soulful, no nonsense lyrics. Awesome.

As the band played “Refugee” I couldn’t help but focus on the audience, including my children, singing in unison “everybody’s got to fight to be free.” Like many Petty lyrics, its a simple, direct, powerful line; easily repeated but probably rarely internalized.

—–

We, as Americans, do have to fight to be free.

The upcoming generations need to understand that. Our grandparents had to fight to be free of Nazism. Our parents and my generation (though we can discuss The Who at another time) fought to be free of Soviet style communism.

But for this generation and the at least the next, not only do we have to fight to be free of radical Islam but more insidiously we have to fight to be free from the tyranny of our own federal and even local governments’ designs on our liberty. We, who are parents, have a responsibility to educate our children. Our freedoms are threatened by those within and without.

We must teach our children about the Declaration, the Constitution, our God given individual rights, the brilliance, morality, sacrifice, and bravery of our forefathers and instill in our kids the motivation to become active participants in guaranteeing their own freedoms. Pink Floyd asked, “Mother, should I trust the government?” The answer is “no.” It is filled with too many people who would gladly step in and decide our freedoms for us.

The best rock and roll has always brought inspiration. Its time we took Petty’s advice; stand our ground, not get turned around and don’t back down or we may all be living like refugees.

However most – if not all – of them – are powerless. They don’t run governments. They’re lucky if they run laundromats.

But in Iran, you’ve got a full-blown neo-Nazi running the government. You’ve got a modern day Hitler boasting about nuclear capability. He shares so much in common with Adolf it’s eerie – his envy-driven hatred, horrible hair and an irrational love for animals. All that’s missing is the funny mustache.

But the bottom line: he’s not white, and you can’t be a neo-Nazis without it. It’s an insidious form of racism: if Ahmadinejad were from Indiana instead of Iran, my gut tells me Obama would have no problem speaking truth to power. Instead, we we hope for change. Or change for hope. I don’t think it matters how you phrase it anymore. The point is, a madman has a bomb, which is slightly more frightening than a wornout pair of Doc Martens.

And if you disagree with me, you’re probably a racist homophobe who kills caterpillars.

Tonight, an awesome show!

the delightful Carrie Keagan!

the demonic Jim Norton!

the delicious Jill Dobson!

the body language king Jeanine Driver!

See the one point that liberals miss when they read the story of Robin Hood was that the man never stole from “the rich.” Leftists like to vilify the wealthy, but the tale of Robin Hood vilifies a corrupt government. Robin Hood was stealing from an oppressive monarchy/administration and giving the wealth back to its rightful owners. He was essentially re-distributing wealth by removing it from the initial re-distributors. Confused? Let’s break down the story of Robin Hood for a second:

• Members of the monarchy are born into positions of power without having been elected.
• Peasants are born into a life of poverty; all of their acquisitions are taken from them by aforementioned monarchy.
• Robin Hood sees the injustice in hard-workers living in squalor while corrupt government officials “be livin’ likes pimps” (this is a quote from the original text, of course).
• Robin Hood says “enough” and takes on the government.
• Government loses control in an elaborate sword-fight (Errol Flynn wears tights).
• The people take back what they’d rightfully earned in the first place.

Hmmm… I’m still not seeing this as any sort of socialist crusade. Where in the story does Mr. Hood steal from small business owners or entrepreneurs? If there’s a sub-plot where Robin Hood professes the necessity of “equal outcomes,” I haven’t read it. Perhaps it’s my mere fourth-grade reading equivalency getting the best of me, but nowhere in the book do I see the Prince of Thieves even SUGGEST any sort of higher or additional taxes.

So again, I’d have to ask: Why do liberals so often use Robin Hood as a Marxist parable? Have they not read the story, or have they only watched the Disney version?

Come to think of it, I thought it was weird when Sean Penn started quoting “Robin Hood the Fox.”