The Daily Middle

I.O.U.S.A

Actors: David Walker, Bob Bixby

Director: Patrick Creadon

I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. Burdened with an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, overextended entitlement programs, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor, America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions.

Throughout history, the American government has found it nearly impossible to spend only what has been raised through taxes. Wielding candid interviews with both average American taxpayers and government officials, Sundance veteran Patrick Creadon (Wordplay) helps demystify the nation’s financial practices and policies. The film follows former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker as he crisscrosses the country explaining America’s unsustainable fiscal policies to its citizens.

With surgical precision, Creadon interweaves archival footage and economic data to paint a vivid and alarming profile of America’s current economic situation. The ultimate power of I.O.U.S.A. is that the film moves beyond doomsday rhetoric to proffer potential financial scenarios and propose solutions about how we can recreate a fiscally sound nation for future generations.

Creadon uses candid interviews and his featured subjects include Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan, Paul O’Neill, Robert Rubin, and Paul Volcker, along with the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s own David Walker and Bob Bixby of the Concord Coalition, a Foundation grantee.

Pointedly topical and consummately nonpartisan, I.O.U.S.A. drives home the message that the only time for America’s financial future is now.

Amazon | iTunes | Trailer (IE8) | Website

Michael Covel’s Broke: The New American Dream

Actors: Michael Covel

Director: Michael Covel

These are tough times. Unemployment has skyrocketed. The stock market has changed lives not in a good way for people stuck in mutual funds buying and holding. Warren Buffett? Sorry, his strategy is dead and if there were no bailouts, his firm collapses. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG are now part of the government. Financial dynasties like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch & Bear Stearns have gone out of business. Government? What government entity can we trust? Michael Covel says, “enough!”

No one asked Covel to make this film, but how else was the message going to get out? Covel traveled 75,000 miles to find answers. Face-to-face interviews with financial gurus from Nobel Prize winners to professional poker players to some of the best traders on the planet, Covel breaks new ground in the field of behavioral finance. From big Wall Street names to real estate agents to ordinary citizens, Covel asks the critical questions: how did we get here and how can we turn it around to make money? Want to know how great traders make millions in up and down markets? Want to know how they made fortunes in 2008 when the rest of the world was sinking? This riveting investigation dispels the irrational belief that the government can solve personal money woes.

Viewers get a big picture beyond the chaos and the noise of stock market news and financial journalism. Fast-paced, informative, and truthful; this is a smart story with a Michael Moore edge. This one of kind documentary film is essentially two parts. The first part lays out the chaos and how we got there. The second part is what you will never forget: superstar traders telling exactly how they thought and navigated the chaos to make millions. Bottom line, this film is about hope. We don’t have to behave like sheep and we don’t have to go ‘broke.’ Active and mindful audiences will discover that there is a way out. There are fortunes to be made!

Amazon | iTunes | Trailer (IE8) | Website

Frontline: Ten Trillion and Counting

Actors: N/A

Director: N/A

The journey begins as FRONTLINE correspondent Forrest Sawyer takes viewers to a secret location: the Treasury’s debt auction room, where the U.S. government sells securities backed by the “full faith and credit of the United States.” On this day, the government is auctioning $67 billion of Treasury securities. The money borrowed will be used to fund services and programs that the government cannot pay for through tax revenues alone.

Observers warn that the United States’ reliance on borrowing to fund essential programs is a dangerous gamble. For the first time, investors are beginning to question the ability of federal government to meet its growing financial obligations, and fading confidence can have dire consequences. “You might have a situation where there is one day when the government says we need to sell several billion dollars of bonds, and nobody shows,” Economist reporter Greg Ip tells FRONTLINE. “No money to pay the Social Security checks, no money to give to the states for their Medicaid programs. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.”

Yet more borrowing is exactly what the Obama administration plans to do: hundreds of billions to bail out the banks and other financial institutions; tens of billions more for the auto industry; $275 billion for homeowners and mortgage lenders; and a giant $787 billion stimulus package to jump-start an economy spiraling downward. Just like the Bush administration before it, Obama and his team are going to borrow big.

“That’s the paradox of the situation that we’re in now,” observes Matt Miller, author of The Tyranny of Dead Ideas. “Government has got to run big deficits to stimulate the economy, deficits that would have been unthinkable … because government’s the only entity with the wherewithal to prop up a demand in the economy when businesses and consumers are all pulling back.”

Amazon | iTunes | Trailer (IE8) | Website | Watch on PBS

60 Minutes: Wake Up Call

Actors: N/A

Director: N/A

David Walker says: Beware, the end is near, but he is neither a nut nor a prophet. Walker is the Comptroller General of the United States, and his job is to audit the country’s books. Walker predicts that unless the U.S. changes its fiscal course, it could go bankrupt when its 78 million baby boomers become eligible for Social Security and Medicare. The Nation’s chief accountant tells Steve Kroft that the U.S. has a fiscal and moral duty to reform its spending.

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