Boom Bust Boom

This is a serious overview of economic crashes & bubbles with a focus towards the 2008 crash. A lot of history is presented as almost every crash including the most recent was history & people repeating the same actions. Primarily is interviews with various economists both alive & (using puppets) dead. A few clips from movies & TV plus new animation injecting humor.

This documentary is targeted towards the average person for whom economic history and specifically the causes of the 2008 crash is all new. Otherwise, this is slightly entertaining to watch but will not be very informative.

This is well put together. It would have been nice to get deeper into the topics but I am not the target audience. But if you are, then I recommend watching.

I don't know anything about economics but I found this program very interesting and definitely entertaining! At times if I stopped paying attention I got slightly lost, but it explained things in multiple ways to make it easier to understand. The funny clips from movies and cartoons were great and well-placed to highlight what was being talked about.

It was an enjoyable hour but by no means was it groundbreaking. For someone who is not intimately acquainted with economics Boom Bust Boom could be an enjoyable lighthearted crash course in the 2008 recession and a few other basic economic theories/concepts. For economists and anyone studying economics, such as myself, the film is lacking any kind of in depth discussion of the finer details relating to the 2008 recession and does not really tell you anything that you do not already know about the recession and the field of economics. It relies almost entirely on quotes and discussion by some notable, and some not notable, economists and academics. I can only recall a few actual data points being used, such as the size of the government bailouts paid to failing banks. So, Boom Bust Boom should not be taken as a serious economic analysis, it gives you the quick and dirty outline of the 2008 recession and the crisis tendency of capitalism but does not go much further.

Okay, so we know why the 2008 financial crisis occurred. Basically western economies grew at 3% but investments grew at 6%, creating a bubble. As the bubble hit its natural peak, financial institutions and government institutions basically kept the process going, as they always do.

But this documentary says the economists don't understand this. They also say that they don't predict bubbles, despite the fact that economists know exactly how to predict bubbles.

The take one out of date and somewhat discredited economist from the 1950s, Minsky, who argues for regulation over free market principles, despite the fact that we know that regulated economies are far less stable than free market economies.

They even say that economics at university doesn't teach you how to manage the economy. Which is true, as most economics graduates just do basic financial calculations in businesses. You know, working out how much it is feasible to borrow for a business, how to manage business risk and so on, and not on how to manage a countries economy.

Basically they set up a strawman who doesn't get a right of reply to their BS. Their whole argument is that the current financial system is not perfect, therefore we need a new one. They talk vaguely about Minsky and regulation, but don't propose an alternative solution.

Basically pathetic, and a waste your time. The first paragraph of this review contains more information about the 2008 financial crisis than the entire hour and 10 minutes of this rubbish.

OK, so maybe you have to be an economist (like me) or a financial analyst to enjoy this 70 minute trip through the periodic financial crises (like the one in 2008) that seem to plague capitalism, but I believe any educated person interested in the causes and after-effects of the 2008 crisis can enjoy this film. It's an interesting combination of animation, puppetry, and original songs that's melded with serious commentary by a number of well-known and influential economists including three Nobel Prize winners. We learn about the various "asset price bubbles" that preceded the unsustainable run-up in home prices prior to the financial crisis and stock market crash of 2008, like the tulip bubble in 17th century Holland, the South Seas bubble in 18th century Britain, and of course the Wall Street crash of 1929. Terry Jones, one of the filmmakers, proves once again that the Monty Python comedy troupe harbored some of the most intelligent, if zany, comedians you'll find anywhere.

The larger issue in this unusual and amusing documentary is the inability of the prevailing mainstream paradigm in economics (the "neo-classical synthesis" for you aficionados) to reflect the mass psychology of financial markets and institutions and their periodic proclivity to either "irrational exuberance" or morbid fear. In addition, the regulatory authorities periodically accommodate market excesses by deregulation and then become more restrictive when the financial excesses have already wrecked the real economy as shown in this film. I am largely sympathetic with this point of view and have long felt that economics suffers from "physics envy" with its elaborate mathematical models (made possible by the assumption that economic agents are optimizing and calculating machines) and its emphasis on market equilibriums. Some of the speakers in this film suggest that economics would be more realistic if it became more of a narrative and descriptive discipline similar to the other social sciences and made less heroic assumptions about the rationality of its agents. Of course, that would be at the expense of the "rigor" of the discipline. Unfortunately, there were no counter-arguments presented by the filmmakers, and at the end we have one economist say: "we have to re-design a new economy." When I hear that, I'm left with the thought that just maybe the periodic excesses in financial markets are the necessary price we must pay for the dynamism of a market economy.