Capitalism: A Love Story

I watched this film off of Netflix's instant viewing service.  On the small screen of my computer, it still looked pretty good.  I'm not sure I buy everything that Michael Moore is selling, but the excesses he documents in this film about derivatives trading on Wall Street, paying regional airline pilots a pittance to break the unions, and companies taking out life insurance policies on their employees (known as "dead peasant" policies), are pretty powerful.  They amount to an indictment of our system of capitalism, but I don't think I'd go so far as to say we need to eliminate the system.  The film also indicts our political system, particularly because of the bailout legislation at the end of 2008, which amounted in Moore's mind to backing a truck up to the Federal treasury and taking all the money.  People are and were genuinely angry about the bailouts, and they probably should be -- even if the money is being paid back, as this Forbes article states:

On the flip side, a number of holdouts are still hanging onto TARP funds received under the Capital Purchase Program. Of the $205 billion the Treasury doled out to 707 banks, $137 billion has been repaid. From the 61 banks that have fully repaid, the Treasury has earned a tidy $13 billion profit.
Among those that still have to repay the funds received under the CPP, Citigroup ( C - news - people ) accounts for $25 billion. The Treasury has been generating some return from its investment in the bank though, selling shares of Citi it received when it converted warrants into common shares to provide the firm an additional capital boost. (See "Treasury Sells More Citi.") Cannon says the Treasury "will get a pretty good return" from selling its stake in Citi but warns that it is premature to make a specific estimate.
With so many firms having repaid taxpayers, what's holding up the rest of the group? "Some of the banks that haven't repaid TARP still have significant commercial real estate exposure," Cannon says, "so the banks and the Treasury are holding back on having those payments made." Because the only thing worse than having to bail out the banking system, would be to have to do it over and over again."

 Moore makes an argument that democracy is the balance to these excesses, and I think he's right.  I just hope we can get the reforms right.