StickWithANose

Yves Smith has demonstrated herself to be a tough, fair-minded critic of the shadow economy and D.C.’s enslavement to it, so I was happy to see her offer a review of Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story.

While Moore brings some immediacy to the oft-recounted misdeeds of the last few years, he also catalogues faceless, under-the-radar indignities which are more disturbing. It’s bad enough that airline pilots need food stamps and/or second jobs to get by. Creepier is that companies routinely take out life insurance policies on employees, not the key-may type, but on the rank and file, seeing these so-called Dead Peasant policies as a profitable venture (Moore did not give the full details, but the two cases that paid out, one $5 million on a bank manager who had cancer, another $81,000 on an asthmatic Wal-Mart cake decorator, suggests that the companies are playing an information asymmetry game, betting they have a better reading on who is in poor health than the insurer. And their success makes life insurance more costly for those who really need it).

Readers [of Naked Capitalism] will likely enjoy his treatment of the TARP and its aftermath. Moore provides evidence well known to finance blog readers, such as Goldman penetration of key policy positions, an obligatory Phil Gramm saying something heinous shot, and the role of financial services contributions (he managed to interview the fellow at Countrywide in charge of the “Friends of Angelo” cheap mortgage as bribe program, who sees nothing wrong in what he did). He also makes good use of Bill Black and Elizabeth Warren. Congressmen and women, agitated even now, describe how the process of getting the TARP through despite overwhelming popular opposition was masterfully orchestrated, carefully timed to prey on re-election fears “like an intelligence operation”. The clips are simply damning, and dispel any doubts of who is really in charge in DC.

I believe that Bug and I will be going to see it this week. I’m interested to keep abreast of what is perhaps the only example of early 21st century populist muckraking… thus far…