Bowling for Columbine happened to turn out to be a great movie.
But he uses unbelievably unfair tactics to convince his viewers. He is also largely retarded.
I'm usually fairly diplomatic around here; I don't like getting involved in controversial discussion in a forum like this. But I'm prepared to take any and all abuse here and go to town on it.
I can't wait to see his new movie about capitalism, for the sheer entertainment value. But, he is making misleading (and actually flat-out inaccurate) statements.
Banks aren't evil. And these "de-ri-va-tives" that he loves mentioning (usually with requisite hand gestures to quote them) are not instruments of evil and greed. From what I understand (I haven't seen the movie), Moore makes his point by asking some high-level people at these financial institutions what a derivative is. They bumble and can't really answer. I have been auditing these things for over 3 years, and if a fat slob with no background asked me to describe them, in a nutshell, on camera, I'm sure I would look just as ignorant. But I'm not.
He describes derivatives as 'bets' where our mortgages serve as the collateral. One thing i want to make very clear is that NO party is this multi-party transaction flow WANTS a mortgager to default. And he implies the very opposite. Without getting too specific, the result of this whole convoluted process, cradle to grave, is that more people were able to get mortgages. Obviously there were terrible oversights in creditworthiness. A lot of people made mistakes. But, the amount of people who actually predicted this is super-limited. To my knowledge, there are like 4 genius goldman bankers who were saying this before it happened. The net result of this whole process is more mortgages and the facilitation of business among people who deal with investment banks. You can say that it's a waste of smart people's minds to engage in banking instead of creating goods, I won't argue that, but to call this evil and greedy is outrageous. If people want to take their genius brain and use it to make a fuck-load of money, that is their prerogative. You don't have to like it. And yes I suppose it is greedy, but if I were capable of doing it and could swing the amount of hours they work I probably would do it too.
I probably haven't been too clear here, I'm a bit up in arms about this issue. But, if anyone disagrees or has a question on my view I'm more than happy to engage. If you call me an idiot or some such insult, I won't be so happy to.
For what it's worth, I don't work in an industry that engages in credit derivatives. I audit many of these companies, and our firm has had the unfortunate but ethical responsibililty to tell them they have to post enormous losses because they hold them.
We may be well below the poverty line, but it's not like we're deprived of the essentials and a few luxuries here and there, so this isn't a "poor me" rant. lol ^^;; And I don't want to debate you or anything. Just stating that my family has been f*cked by the banks time and time again, so based on my personal experience, Michael Moore isn't a liar in that regard. 
