Let's Make Money

Some of the documentaries being made these days are so poignant - partly due no doubt to the easy availability of info through the internet - that I am being stunned repeatedly! This film states so many shocking facts in less than 2 hours it's almost too much to take in.

The sad thing is that most people in the west still have no idea what the U.S.-led World Bank and I.M.F. (and the corporations behind their decisions) are actually doing to poor Third World countries : the exploitation goes on as if we were still in the 1800's (witness the cotton-pickers in Africa) but now on a much, much larger scale.

If you want to know what is really going on in our age, WATCH this film.

Let's make money is a very well made documentary which focuses on how money is made and distributed by investors, corporations and the rich elite through the global financial system.

I largely agree with the standpoints which are communicated in this movie, however I must admit that it biased towards the "liberal anti- globalisation" camp. It also tends to polarize between the poor, innocent and exploited developing world and the rich and greedy west. All in all this view of the world is probably correct, however reality is more complex and the movie does not mention any specifics in this regard.

Nonetheless, very interesting and very enlightening. Definitively worth watching.

Wagenhofer has done it again. This one is better than all of Michael Moore's films combined because it leaves the audience feeling informed, but not manipulated. The prevailing thought after seeing this film is "what can I do to make it better?" This documentary combines interviews with key people directly involved in strong-arming governments, hiding the owners of trusts whose money has damaged millions of lives, enslaved people in India and Africa and supported laws that allow financial institutions (in London, for example) to operate unregulated in order to maximize profits for a few as they they destroy the lives of many, with outstanding camera work and very clever use of visual and auditory iconography throughout. Just watch it!

Frankly, I wasn't too hot about Wagenhofer's previous documentary "We Feed The World", which dealt with the food industry. Now, he's tackling the much harder to "photograph" financial system, and he pins it right down. Wagenhofer documents some egregious examples of the global financial system going haywire, and he nails down the right cases. Those gargantuan, deserted Spanish golf course castles will stay in your mind. So will the sheer, pharaonean poverty of cotton pickers and granite maimers (for a better word) in Burkina Faso.

Film is always thick on emotion, thin on information. This documentary offers a few mental stepping stones. Tomorrow I'm going to look up some of the points mentioned in this film. That's about all you can ask from a good documentary.

This movie is nothing but left wing garbage. Third world people of color good. Northern Europeans and Americans bad! Yawn. They take you through all of the poorest parts of the third world, and ignore the growing middle class in all of those countries, of course. Anything that does not support the leftist anti-capitalist viewpoint is left out. Badly put together, out of context comments, moralizing, and so on. Blame for problems placed onto the USA or the World Bank when most of the blame belongs to the "victim" countries and their lousy corrupt governments. Waste of time unless you believe in this far left, anti-capitalist cult of guilt.