On Classic Hollywood

Tonight we watched It's a Wonderful Life it seemed fitting in honour of the day of the year. (Here is an unrelated aside, speaking of December 25, what day was Joshua son of Joseph - aka Jesus Christ - actually born? Answer: sometime in April or May most likely probably sometime between the year 6BCE and 4BCE. The date, December 25 was chosen to coincide with the Pagan Holiday of Saturnalia, a period of merriment and gift exchanging. I am not entirely sure why the early Christians selected the year they did to mark the start of their calendar, but I'd be willing to bet it was more than some trivial accounting error.)

As the movie progressed (it was the first time I had ever seen it) I became more and more frustrated watching. I kept thinking to our own current financial system and the disaster it is in. The problem the writers of It's a Wonderful Life brushed aside to trivially is money. You see the movie is premised on a good and decent guy who runs a small mortgage company that is perpetually near bankrupt. The mortgage company remains liquid despite the efforts of a mean old bank owner who has all the money in town. And thus the problem I have with the entire movie.

You see its not the rich mean old people who have all the money, its the pension funds and the insurance policies, that is where all the money is. Now think about this, when banks lend money to people who cannot afford to pay the bill what happens? Well the banks have a cash crisis as the short term debt dries up the cost of lending goes up, interest rates are driven up and the economy goes to hell in a hand basket. Meanwhile pension funds find themselves writing off loans and potentially people's retirement savings end up in the Ken Lay trust fund and insurance companies find themselves short for cash when claims start rolling in so insurance premiums skyrocket and claims adjusters find themselves in the lucky position of being ordered to reduce payouts.

Most people who were recipients of these, lets call them subprime loans, used the money not for something lasting, like a home renovation or a new home, but rather the money was used for a new car, or perhaps to pay off a mountain of Visa debt, or the subprime loan might have been a Visa debt in the first place.

In Its a Wonderful Life the loans buy homes and when people have a vested interest in the property they take care of it. Which is true, but in the automobile powered America of today we have urban sprawl (interestingly in Wonderful Life Bailey Park represents an early example of urban sprawl) and all the problems in sprawl, including dependency on oil much of it from abroad, ok a lot is from Canada right now, but don't forget the third largest supply of Oil to the United States is also the World's largest exporter in 9/11 terrorists, Saudi Arabia. As well there is the mass production of green house gasses, the paving over of first rate farm land, the excessive use of natural resources for heating detached homes as well as supplying water, electricity and roads to greater distances.

One final shot at the movie, the protagonist lives in a "drafty old home", he really should get a vapour barrier up and some decent insulation. He's wasting tones of energy heating the outside, someone send in Mike Holmes!