Quick Movie Review - The Debt

The Debt - Thumbs Down - also SPOILER ALERT

This is a movie about some Jews hunting a Nazi death camp doctor (Jesper Christensen.)  Sounded promising, but the weird title should have been a red flag. 

Jesper Christensen

Helen, Launching 1000 Ships

Helen Mirren, who I used to think was kind of hot, looks just awful as an old lady who conspires with her spy buddies to lie about killing the old Nazi to avoid the shame of a failed mission.  The lie gets out of hand, and the shame bothers them to different degrees over the years.  Mostly I picked it because I'm a Helen Mirren fan.

Helen's First Movie

Helen Back in the Day

Helen in 2011

Here Helen sports a facial scar that ironically looks like something a German general might have. The Debt uses the same flashback format that fans of Cold Case will recognize.  Helen only plays her character as an old lady. 

Q: Who goes for the face with a knife?

Otto Skozeny, Actual Nazi

(Sword duelling wound)

Helen's character, Rachel, as her younger self is played by the hot chick from The Help (Jessica Chastain.)  The younger characters are a MMF love triangle of Israeli spy/commandos. 

Hot Jessica Chastain

The leader (Marton Csokas) looks like Greg Brady's much more handsome older brother, and the other guy (Sam Worthington) looks like a brooding high school athlete. 

My wife opined that Csokas is much sexier than Worthington.

Marton Csokas

Hot chick and brooder are in love, somehow, in a mutually unrequited sort of way.  We are supposed to discern that Brooder has some special WW II emotional damage baggage he's carting around from all of the unsubtle hints that the film keeps bashing us on the head with. 

Chastain, Contemplative

BMOC is more emotionally tough and opportunistic, not to mention smooth, so natch he hooks up with Hot Chick when she looks vulnerable, and natch she gets "with child."  Oh, Fate, you cruel, constructed master.

The old folks are not very interesting, and their motivation is so weak as to be distracting.  Lots of movie cliches.  So if you enjoy movies where you can figure out what will happen next, you might like this.  But I doubt it.  I'm not completely averse to predictable plots.  But when the obvious turns are dragged out for faux suspense I start to look at my watch and wonder when the pace will pick up.  Really, here the most interesting character is the Nazi doctor, but he's not worth two hours.  It's too late for me but you can still save yourself.  Rent one of the Bourne movies instead.

The Insincere Economic Debate

In today’s NYT, Nobel prize economist Paul Krugman once again makes his plea for people to please please please understand that the biggest economic problem facing the country is unemployment.  He despairs that this is so while the government and the media and much of the population obsess over the increasing national debt of the US.  Why won’t they see???  How can everybody be so blind???

Paul misses the point.  Everybody knows that the national debt is not a real problem.  Everybody knows that, but not everybody cares.  And many of the people who do care waste their time trying to convince people who already know that they are right that they are right.  Silly.  Missing the point.

The folks who don’t want the national debt enlarged are the very rich people.  The people who already have a lot of money.  They don’t care about unemployment because it doesn’t affect them.  They believe that they are right not to care about unemployment if it does not affect them because they have an understanding that democracy works best if everyone votes for their own self-interest.  Since these people don’t see that unemployment affects them negatively, they don’t see any reason to vote to pay for solutions to other peoples’ problems.  They are voting for their own self-interest.  And fixing unemployment ain’t it.

As far as the politicians who claim that “solving” the national debt “crisis” is the way to create jobs and restore the middle class, they are just lying.  Not in a bad way.  It’s their job.  They’ve been elected by banking, financial, and business interests to keep the Wall Street economy intact.  And of course to do their job properly they need to keep getting re-elected.  And since it turns out that to do that this year a certain amount of lip service needs to be paid to solving unemployment, their lips are appropriately in gear.  A big part of a politician’s job is to serve the needs and whims of rich folks while keeping the regular folks feeling satisfied with less.  Not all the regular folks, just about half.  The rest they can bad-mouth.  Rich folks control most politicians, in case you hadn’t noticed, and rich folks don’t really care if you have a job or can afford your house or medical care, as long as you work cheap for as long as they need you and then go away with no fuss when they don’t.

As far as the money goes, or “monetary policy” if you’re a fancy pants, if you have a lot of money then you want it to stay valuable.  If Ben Bernanke continues to print more of it, then it might become less valuable.  Hence we see very angry opposition to quantitative easing.  Well, all of us who are not rich should thank God for Ben, because without quantitative easing we would all be scrounging for potato soup.  But I digress.

Paul, Mr. Krugman, please understand that this is not an honest debate.  It is three-card monte.  It is smoke and mirrors.  It is snake oil.  The real debate is how to stop these elected con men from fooling our fellow citizens with their laundry list of red herrings and bogey men.  National debt, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, homosexuals, abortionists, people who say “Happy Holidays,” unions, public school teachers, “illegal” Mexicans, and of course Barack Obama.

It’s not a contest of ideas. It's beer and circus. It’s class warfare by maneuver.

Saving Ourselves

How to Save the American Economy

by Saving the Middle Class Consumer

Americans owe about 2.5 Trillion Dollars in non-mortgage consumer debt.  That’s a lot of money.  It breaks out to about $8,300 per person, with 1/3 for credit card debt, and 2/3 for non-revolving debt such as auto loans and student loans.  With the average American family at 3.15 people, that works out to an average of $26,000 per family.  However keep in mind that consumer debt tends to be weighted toward families with children living at home.  The average American household income is right around $50,000, so we see an average consumer debt burden of slightly over half of the gross household income.   Toss in taxes, household bills, gas, and the rent or mortgage payment, and you have the average American household living paycheck to paycheck.  That’s the average.  That means that a lot of American families aren’t making it into the black every month.  This is what is known as an unsustainable situation.  This is why over a million Americans file bankruptcy every year.

An American losing his home.

In America we have a consumer based economy.  That means most of us make our money when our fellow countrymen are buying stuff from each other.  Consumers are the root and heart of our economy.  As more and more of us have less to spend, we stop buying.   The key to understanding the economy is to understand that it’s all about money moving.  Money is like blood.  When the money sits still, the economy stops.  When the money is moving the economy is better.  Money doesn’t disappear, it just moves or sits still.  We need to keep the money moving.  Circulating, if you will.

In today’s America, we as consumers are the ones who move most of the money.  We are the heart of the economy.  If we stop buying houses and new cars and flat screen tv’s and vacations to tourist destinations then the money doesn’t move to those industries and they shrink or go out of business.  If we consumers are squeezed even tighter then we cancel our cable tv and turn down the heat and air conditioning and stop paying our Visa and MasterCard bills and use up our savings accounts to buy groceries then the banks and utilities start to lose money.  This is what has been happening for the last three years.

So we have The Great Recession.  Why?  Because consumers are over-extended and cannot find enough well paying work to cover their current expenses and make additional purchases of new products.  All this talk about the banks failing and derivatives and CDO’s and securitizations and AIG and Goldman Sachs and the government debt is missing the point.  They are stems and leaves.  Results, not causes.  Symptoms, not the disease.   All of our current financial problems are rooted in the American consumers’ inability to pay their bills.  To fix the economy, to get out of The Great Recession, we need to fix the American consumer.

Why indeed, Barney?

When American consumers can pay their bills, then delinquencies and defaults on credit cards, loans, and mortgages will plummet.  Fewer people will file bankruptcy.  These defaulting consumers are the basis for the problems with Mortgage Backed Securities and Asset Backed Securities and Collateralized Debt Obligations and other derivatives that everyone is afraid or unwilling to value as the skeletons in the “too big to fail” banks’ closets.  They all ultimately rest on simple consumer debt, which in turn rests on the shoulders of American consumers.   Real people.

When American consumers can pay their bills, they will be paying more taxes, which will help the federal budget and national debt.

When American consumers can pay their bills, they will be willing and able to buy new things, like cars and tv’s and houses, that will start the economic cycle of money swirling around again.

When American consumers can pay their bills, bankruptcies and foreclosures will go down dramatically, along with the attendant trauma to American families, marriages, communities, and children.

Foreclosure - What is it good for?

The real answer to our economic problems then seems pretty obvious.  We need to fix the American consumer.  What is the ailment?  Debt.  How do you fix debt?  Money.  How do you get money into the hands of the American consumer?  Four ways.  First, and preferably, with jobs, but that is not happening and will take too long.  We are already over three years into this mess and unless we want our very own “lost decade” we need to nut up and find the political will to take some fast acting medicine.  Faster alternatives are giving money away (simply not doable), or cutting taxes (not powerful enough, limited in scope, and subject to political shenanigans).

American should declare war on the Recession

 The real answer is to allow everyone to re-finance.  How? A Consumer Bailout.  We, America, can lend ourselves the money to re-finance our 2.5 trillion dollars in consumer debt, at very low interest rates and with a long repayment period to provide a low monthly payment. We can do this.  Now.  Yes, we can.  

Go, Bo!  How about some leadership?

Here’s how it would look:

The Treasury sets up a $2,000,000,000,000 special credit facility where any American consumer can consolidate all of their consumer debt (non-mortgage) into a Federal Consolidation Loan.

Not your Daddy's Depression

Not your Daddy's Solutions

Banks and Credit Unions will conduct intake and process the loans for 50 basis points of the loan amount.

Treasury issues special classes of bonds to finance the loans, initially to be paid through repayments, and insured by the full faith and credit of the United States.  Treasury will charge a 100 basis point insurance fee for this.

The IRS will issue the loans and process repayments.  Loan issuance will be directly to the consumers’ creditors, similar to the process used in distributing funds in bankruptcy.  Haircuts may be required where interest or fees are excessive.  Repayments will be required to be automatically taken out of borrowers’ payroll checks where applicable, or remitted monthly otherwise.  IRS will charge 50 basis points per payment amount.

Borrowers will be able to borrow at the prevailing 30 year bond rate plus 2% for a period of up to 30 years depending on the amount borrowed.  Borrowers will be able to borrow up to $200,000 dollars for existing debts that are at least six months old.  Borrowers will be able to obtain forbearances for periods of unemployment or financial distress similar to those available to student loan borrowers. 

A fresh perspective on credit

Conditions can be put on eligibility that consumers pass a money management literacy test and agree to some limitations on future credit to prevent them from going back into unmanageable debt. More people can get used to paying cash for a while.

Teaching a better way

We need new leaders is Washington who will try new solutions.  Consumer credit on this scale is new.  The solution to these problems will need to be new.

New Generation - Economist Austan Goolsbee

 and his smokin' hot wife Robin

Debt is the problem. Restructuring is the answer. Everybody benefits. The American people will get relief, and American families will not be torn apart by the stress and shame of foreclosure and bankruptcy. Banks and creditors will get paid, filling their coffers and strengthening their balance sheets.

What’s not to like?