There's horror, and then there's horror. Think, for example, of the classic horror film Carrie, which featured a school dance that got ruined. Well, there's a movie on the horizon that's much scarier than that. It's a new documentary, and it can help you see a financial horror show that's playing out in our great nation -- for real.
You may have read a little about Professor Robert Manning and his war against credit card abuses. One of his latest projects has been advising filmmaker Danny Schechter during the making of In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Bursts.
According to Investment News, Schechter showed his film in upstate New York this summer, introducing it by saying that "the country's dependence on debt has become a crisis" and that the financial industry is being "protected by an absence of regulation on a bipartisan basis." Scarier still is his vision of "powerful financial institutions dominating the economy and the society [as] a sort of credit and loan complex very much like the military industrial complex."
The film isn't yet playing at your local 153-plex, but with any luck, it will be. (Mr. Schechter has been working on getting a distribution deal.) Or maybe we'll end up seeing it on television. Either way, if you get a chance to see it, do so.
Meanwhile, here are some other business-related documentaries that you might want to look up (many are available at Amazon.com and elsewhere):
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Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price -- Filmmaker Robert Greenwald presents ordinary Americans' thoughts on the role of Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) in America. You can read media reviews of the movie here and Fool opinions on Wal-Mart here.
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Super Size Me -- Morgan Spurlock documents the month he spent eating nothing but food from McDonald's (NYSE:MCD).
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Outfoxed:
Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism -- Robert Greenwald tackles the chief of News Corp. (NYSE:NWS) and the right wing of journalism.
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The Corporation -- The history of American companies, featuring interviews with many thoughtful CEOs, historians, and others.
- Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room -- Perhaps you can imagine what this movie has to say. It should shock many of us.
Whether or not you agree with the filmmakers' conclusions, these films offer some provoking food for thought.
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Wal-Mart is a Motley Fool Inside Value selection. Amazon is a Stock Advisor recommendation.
Longtime Fool contributor Selena Maranjian owns shares of McDonald's and Wal-Mart. The Motley Fool has a horror-free disclosure policy.
