The Housing Bubble

Every now and then you come across titles with few votes and high ratings. In the documentary genre, this can mean that you've struck gold and found a great documentary yet to be discovered.

With 32 votes and user reviews being veeery supportive, I took one for the team and watched this last night. And I'm sorry to say it's not gold. It's not worth your time even.

It's just random clips of people talking about the housing crisis without any timeline or central thread. Mixed in are cartoon clips and ever so often a narrator voice. There is no movie here, this is a playlist of people and cartoons.

You might think that the people at least would be interesting, but they're not. They're the classic libertarian voices complaining about leadership and policies. In the end you get the picture that the US economy is doomed and all of it will come to an end quite soon. And sure, they are correct in some ways, but the people in this movie offer no real alternatives. It's all about complaining. Ron Paul has some alternatives, but they are at least questionable and in a good documentary you would get the counter arguments presented as well. Here there is none of that.

All who witnessed the crisis understands there needs to be changes done to credit lending. Debt, the FED and stimulus packages in the US are not perfect but this movie offers no real alternatives. The problems are very complex and any good solution will probably be a nuanced one which take into account the many possible ramifications.

If you want to watch a good documentary on the housing bubble, go watch Inside Job, but you probably have already. If you rather watch fiction, go watch The Big Short.

About the flaws and fails that has disturbed the american, and unintentionally the world economies trough the last 100 years. they use the housebubble to line up why it became so, and who saw it and how they can avoid this i the future to come.

the grumpy old man have trawled the internet the past 11 years to find a good explonation, and finally found one. recommended.

This may seem like a bold claim, but this documentary blows away other content on the United States' 2007-'08 financial crisis. Not only are perspectives from academics of the Austrian school incorporated (a true rarity these days), this film simultaneously provides the ultimate service to viewers and the biggest middle-finger to the establishment by focusing on the original cause of all financial crises: intervention in the market.

The historians and academics in the film do an excellent job of walking the viewer through the seemingly complex economic history of the US by chronologically laying out what was said and done by people in power, especially since the creation of the Federal Reserve, who predicted it and how it can be prevented fro ever happening again.

The best part is that a proclivity for this topic is not needed and you don't need to live in the US to learn something valuable. The content of this film is applicable to anyone living in a country with a central bank. Everything is put into laymen terms and is easy to understand. The top-notch production and editing that utilized recognizable clips from popular media kept the fact-filled film entertaining and lighthearted. I plan on watching this again with my family.

The Housing Bubble does a great job at explaining the role of interest rates and inflation on an economy. While it focuses on the housing bubble, it gives a great overview of the recent history of the boom-bust business cycle in the United States, all while keeping the viewer entertained with clever editing.

I was amazed with how much I had learned in just over an hour! A great watch for anyone, regardless of their economic literacy.