When movies like Catch-22 start making sense on more than one levels, it’s time to take a closer look at how things work
This series will focus on the state of the world economy and the financial crisis.
The topics are five:
- Bailout
- Toxicity
- Economy
- Unaccountability
- Aftermath
To nail these topics, let’s use clips from the movie Catch-22 to exemplify them, bringing out the flavor in them.
First up, the Bailout. We keep hearing about plans that will restore investor confidence in the markets and kick start the economy. How people/citizens/consumers need to start spending again. How banks need to resume loaning money to people and businesses. How the system, as it stands, will be fixed with a little tinkering because it’s driven by rational forces. We want to believe it. Our hope is that the people in charge really know what they’re doing and that things will be OK again.
Yet, upon closer look, it appears that profiteering has hijacked enterprise, scuttling the free market and sabotaging the economy. Speculators have taken over, running the show at the expense of healthy trade. It’s more about the quick buck than anything else, with little sense of justice or compassion for the individuals who come together to make up this economy, this machine that drives our progress. It’s Soviet Communism without the Soviet Communists, but with the same callousness, where the thugs have now changed brand. They’ve replaced the hammer and sickle with money, and the communist party for the party of their lives, acting as “businessmen”, as individuals supposedly looking out for the greater good. They have no nation, they’re supranational and unaccountable, working the system behind the iron curtain of big interests, skewing politics, affecting policies, sucking entire countries dry. They take from the poor to give to the rich and leave everyone with no safety net when the whole thing collapses.
Here’s what it looks like. You be the judge whether it’s satire or reality…
And here’s a bonus – Milo Minderbinder, doing what he does best…