Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S. Liab

[Slimprofits]

PR NEWSWIRE
Posted: 2007-12-21 12:57:23

BALTIMORE, Dec. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- On December 17, the Bush administration acknowledged that the U.S. government has promised $45 trillion more in entitlements than it can afford.

Add these latest numbers from the "Financial Report of the U.S. Government" to other government commitments, including our national debt and social insurance programs, and the nation is looking at $62 trillion in debt.

Comptroller General David Walker spoke before the National Press Club on December 17, 2007, following the president's acknowledgement that debt and deficits do matter. Walker mentions the film I.O.U.S.A., saying, "There have been numerous Op-Eds, editorials and articles in newspapers and periodicals across the country. I appreciate the important role the press has played, and continues to play, in getting the truth out, but more needs to be done."

Walker continued:

"Importantly, a commercial documentary based on my four national deficits message -- namely our budget, savings, balance of payments and leadership deficits -- is nearing completion. The film features Bob Bixby of [the Concord Coalition], myself and others. The tentative title is I.O.U.S.A., and the documentary is set for general release next spring -- in time for the 2008 general election campaign. I.O.U.S.A. was one of 16 out of over 900 films accepted for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Who knows, maybe the documentary will be nominated for an Oscar ... "

Walker recognized the media's efforts in getting the message out -- I.O.U.S.A. will help accomplish that.

Agora Entertainment's I.O.U.S.A. documentary film has been accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. The World Premiere will be on January 19, 2008, in Park City, Utah.

The highly anticipated I.O.U.S.A. is inspired by The New York Times best- selling book Empire of Debt, co-authored by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin. They have been covering the national debt story for several years.

The film is directed by Patrick Creadon who also directed WordPlay, the fascinating expose of The New York Times crossword puzzle tournament in Stamford, Connecticut.

I.O.U.S.A. features interviews with a stunning selection of financial experts -- including legendary investor Warren Buffett, Paul Volcker, Ron Paul, Robert Rubin, Paul O'Neill, Arthur Laffer and U.S. Comptroller General David Walker.

Few are aware that America may be on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. exposes the country's shocking current fiscal condition and ways to avoid a national economic disaster.

http://www.agorafinancial.com/iousa.html

The most disturbing thing about all of this? The links to The Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution on the IOUSA webpage.

Who are these people, i.e. Agora Financial?

I see that Mike Shedlock is on the list of their financial columnists. Does he still post here?

[GRG55]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

PR NEWSWIRE
Posted: 2007-12-21 12:57:23



http://www.agorafinancial.com/iousa.html

The most disturbing thing about all of this? The links to The Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution on the IOUSA webpage.

Who are these people, i.e. Agora Financial?

I see that Itulip favorite (that's a joke) Mike Shedlock is the list of their financial columnists.

Agora is a publishing house. Co-founder Bill Bonner is a US citizen but currently resides in France. They put out a series of financial newletters and other publications in print and over the net. Bonner's "The Daily Reckoning" blog can be quite hilarious as he wields a rather sharp pen, and doesn't hesitate to use it to deflate some stuffed shirt or another.
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/

I don't follow any of their stuff regularly, as it does get tedious and repetitive, but every now and then his blog is worth a visit for comic relief as he is by far the most entertaining writer of the lot.

[santafe2]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

As the Concord Coalition and others will point out, the issue with Medicare is that it is underfunded socialized medicine. My understanding is that we'd have to raise our taxes in the US by 18-20% to properly fund universal health care. We've not done that so the "infinite horizon liability" is huge, $62T.

For the Bush administration to pretend they care about liabilities and underfunding of any government activity, is too silly to address. Between this president and his father, they are responsible for more than 1/2 the US debt. Toss in the Reagan administration deficits and you can account for roughly $7.5T of the current $9T in US debt. Any pretense to fiscal responsibility is simply a ruse aimed at breaking government.

After a quick read of the Agora Financial web site and in particular this sentence:

Throughout history, the American government has found it nearly impossible to spend only what has been raised through taxes.

I'd have to conclude that this is the work of a right wing think tank. Anyone familiar with the ebb and flow of American government debt will know that our debt problems began in 1980 with Reagan and the neo-cons. For 204 years prior to that time, debt was accumulated during time of war and repaid during the following years.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

I'd have to conclude that this is the work of a right wing think tank.

That could explain their recommendation of the Heritage Foundation as a 'resource'.

[FRED]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

That could explain their recommendation of the Heritage Foundation as a 'resource'.

Agora Financial = Right Wing Washington Think Tank

We avoid association with all ideology-based publishing organizations.

Their approach:

1. Define ideology based on personal interests and beliefs.
2. Develop economic and market theory around it.
3. Look for data that confirm it.
4. Attract an audience that agrees with the ideology and continuously via them newsletters and blogs provide content that confirms the bias.
5. Sell them newsletters, books, financial products, etc.

Our approach:

1. Search out a range of experts with varying views on how the economy and financial system actually work.
2. Develop economic and market theory around it.
3. Look for data that do NOT confirm it (modify theory as contradictory evidence demands).
4. Attract an audience that is interested in learning about how the world actually works and how it is likely to change versus confirming existing bias.
5. Sell subscriptions and relevant 3rd party products.

Our approach produces forecasts with higher predictive value but the content is less comforting and entertaining (with good guys and bad guys) because it forces readers to reassess their beliefs on occasion (e.g., FIRE Economy, etc.)

[GRG55]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

Agora Financial = Right Wing Washington Think Tank

We avoid association with all ideology-based publishing organizations.

Their approach:

1. Define ideology based on personal interests and beliefs.
2. Develop economic and market theory around it.
3. Look for data that confirm it.
4. Attract an audience that agrees with the ideology and continuously via them newsletters and blogs provide content that confirms the bias.
5. Sell them newsletters, books, financial products, etc.

Our approach:

1. Search out a range of experts with varying views on how the economy and financial system actually work.
2. Develop economic and market theory around it.
3. Look for data that do NOT confirm it (modify theory as contradictory evidence demands).
4. Attract an audience that is interested in learning about how the world actually works and how it is likely to change versus confirming existing bias.
5. Sell subscriptions and relevant 3rd party products.

Our approach produces forecasts with higher predictive value but the content is less comforting and entertaining (with good guys and bad guys) because it forces readers to reassess their beliefs on occasion (e.g., FIRE Economy, etc.)

Of course Agora is trying to be entertaining. It's marketing entertainment (under the guise of financial education and information). But surely only the truly silly could fail to recognize that.

That's why I recommended Bonner for periodic comic relief (Mega: This is where you should go for a hit, when you think that EJ and FRED aren't sexing it up enough...)

...I don't follow any of their stuff regularly, as it does get tedious and repetitive, but every now and then his blog is worth a visit for comic relief as he is by far the most entertaining writer of the lot.

[Guest]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

Of course Agora is trying to be entertaining. It's marketing entertainment (under the guise of financial education and information). But surely only the truly silly could fail to recognize that.

Actually, no. Although iTulip have a far more sophisticated model, and provide a great deal more depth of analysis - it must be noted that Agora provided two or three of the top performing stock portfolio newsletters of the past seven years. Go to the Hulbert Digest and look up Outstanding Investments, an all-commodity, all-the-time newsletter currently shepherded by Kevin Kerr who is indeed an outstanding commodities specialist. It's had an awesome trakc record for most of a decade, and truly picks a very high quality commodities portfoliolo. I was a subscriber for years, and this is by no means a "fluff" or vanity publication.

They have other newsletter authors in their "stable", e.g. Adam Lass, a high powered options specialist who is really awesome in short term trading (with lots of leverage!) and Steve Sjuggerud, who's service has extremely good risk adjusted returns. They have another service which is very useful in investigating where and how to open foreign accounts. In truth, some of these newsletters have far more highly focused stock picking than does anything I've caught a glimmer of around iTulip. Believe it - it's true.

But here's the real point - and it's a considerably broader one - stock picking of itself is essentially banal. You can find lots of superb stock picking newsletter advisories littered all over the place. That's why I don't understand the terrible seriousness with which we hunt down stock picks around here. You should use iTulip to "peel back the layers upon layers of cross-currents" to spot the major emerging trends, specifically the financial ones, and use that as an early warning system to guide your sector positioning in the stock (or other asset!) markets.

iTulip does what none of those stock tip portfolios do, and has incomparably more depth, character and flair in going about it. However it's important to not turn this into a "self confirming RAH RAH club, where we say "iTulip is better at everything and AGORA and all the rest of the so-and-so's are all crap". So in the process of being completely objective, we might note that according to Hulbert's Newsletter tracking, one or two of AGORA's commodity driven newsletters were far out ahead of the pack in 2001 or so, in assembling commodity driven portfolios that were extremely high powered.

So GRG55, when you note "only the silly could fail to recognize that" you are actually endorsing a viewpoint that could benefit from a little less unqualified endorsement of "all iTulip all the time". Sorry, but the Hulbert record confrms it unequivocally. Spend a couple of hundred bucks on an annual subscription and it's right there in print.

Having said that, AGORA is full of what Fred points out are "agenda driven" position statements, although Bill Bonner does provide some acerbic humor here and there that is like nice fizzy champagne to leaven it all up. I reiterate what I've observed before - iTulip to my mind is most definitely NOT a stock picking service. And yes it's true also that Bonner gets more than a little smug a lot of the time - liberally employing the "royal WE" in his form of address, and shooting barbs of mockery at everything but their own company.

There really are other newsletters or services which are much more highly focused (some might say "restricted") to stock picking, but that really do that very well indeed. They can be used as an adjunct - only after having really decoded the macro picture - which is best done right here.

I suggest that all the avid stock pickers around here simply broaden their "net" to scoop up lots of superb stock picks by spending even as much as a thousand dollars a year on them to "buy directly actionable intelligence" from these perfectly good advisories, and thereby slake their thirst for directly actionable ideas that way - then come back to iTulip in a more detached frame of mind to read about the broader issues. ITulip is the compass without which a basket of mis-timed or wrong sector stock picks can prove a disastrous strategy.

I really don't approve of all the iTulip unqualified adulation however. If too many people start doing that, newcomers here would start percieving a "self-congratulation club" and be considerably less impressed at first glance. I also don't approve of people here getting extremely agitated at any particularly pointed or insistent challenges to iTulip points of view, as this betrays too much of a "follower" mentality. Challenges or disagreements can be put forward even stiffly and insistently, and this should be entirely removed from any perception the challenges are personal - at their best, the challenges remain purely about ideas, and remain posed in a very sporting way.

[mikedev10]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

pete peterson bought the movie for his billion dollar foundation that david walker now heads. they tried to inject as little political opinion as they could while discussing the factual issues. the movie is set to be shown one day right now - august 21st, a thursday, at 7pm. the movie will be followed by a live simulcast of warren buffet, pete peterson, and david walker. it is now playing in over 400 theaters, many near me in the chicago burbs. you can see a preview for the movie as well as search for local theaters on the movie's official site - http://www.iousathemovie.com. if you buy tickets online and forward the receipt to customerservice@agorafinancial.com they will sign you up for 1 year access to their 'strategic investments' newsletter. i think the movie and interview will be very interesting and well worth anyone's time to go to it. i think it will be especially interesting for anyone's economically ignorant or careless family and friends. they shot the movie to make the data as interesting and consumable as possible. i have high expectations for it.

[mikedev10]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

as a note on agora, i've only become interested in politics/economics/investing in about the last year upon discovering that i really like ron paul and really think we are getting pretty screwed. pretty much all of my stock/option purchases are from agora, with occasional ideas from itulip as well. i don't have a good mind for ferreting out and valuing stocks but the service they provide is pretty valuable to me. i agree with a lot of their views and appreciate the balance/reality that itulip brings to the table when analyzing macroeconomic trends. i pretty much base everything i do off of these two sources.

[mikedev10]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

looks like warren buffet's squanderville vs.thriftville will be animated in this, a very famous essay of his - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1053684/posts

longer trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYLNWRI9z_M

[The Outback Oracle]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

Why are we suddenly stuck on labels around here? (no pun intended)
What the hell does it matter for this documentary. Obviously, to produce something like this and get it marketed costs a lot of money. Surely anything which gets into mainstream media and is seriously addressing the issues of debt and the unsustainability of the current situation is a good thing...if it is factual. I note noone here has disputed the facts so why are we worried if it is sponsored by Agora?
Further I agree. I have been reading Agora newsletters (free ones) for a couple of years and actually found itulip through a post on one of their discussion boards, and yes basically they write particularly well and indeed I also have, from time to time, gained considerable amusement.

[medved]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

I'd have to conclude that this is the work of a right wing think tank. Anyone familiar with the ebb and flow of American government debt will know that our debt problems began in 1980 with Reagan and the neo-cons. For 204 years prior to that time, debt was accumulated during time of war and repaid during the following years.

Just a quick reminder: it is the House of Representatives, that creates the budget. The president can only accept it or veto it (no line item veto). So the real culprit of Reagan deficits are the libs in the congress, because they flatly refused to cut spending. Neo-cons took the Congress in 1994, and, while Clinton was in office, tried to keep him in check. They even attempted to shut down the gov't once, when it ran out of money. However, they got scared to death by the media propaganda campaign and quickly gave it up. Of course, when GW came to power, they started spending like crazy, because he was their president.

OTOH, any president knows, that limits on spending mean lost election, so don't count on balanced budget anytime soon, no matter libs or neocons. They are just two socialist parties using different kinds of rhetoric. The libs are classical lefty socialists, and neocons accept socialism, because their voters want it. To a degree, neocons are a mirror image of the 'siloviki' in Russia: they are nationalists first and socialists second.

[nathanhulick]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

Just a quick reminder: it is the House of Representatives, that creates the budget. The president can only accept it or veto it (no line item veto). So the real culprit of Reagan deficits are the libs in the congress, because they flatly refused to cut spending. Neo-cons took the Congress in 1994, and, while Clinton was in office, tried to keep him in check. They even attempted to shut down the gov't once, when it ran out of money. However, they got scared to death by the media propaganda campaign and quickly gave it up. Of course, when GW came to power, they started spending like crazy, because he was their president.

OTOH, any president knows, that limits on spending mean lost election, so don't count on balanced budget anytime soon, no matter libs or neocons. They are just two socialist parties using different kinds of rhetoric. The libs are classical lefty socialists, and neocons accept socialism, because their voters want it. To a degree, neocons are a mirror image of the 'siloviki' in Russia: they are nationalists first and socialists second.

In 1992, a third party candidate running on a platform of fiscal conservatism won 20% of the popular vote. This is what limited the growth in spending from Congress and the Clinton administration.

Both the Democrats and Republican parties are in favor of more government spending and larger governments, its just that they do not agree on what particular programs they want to spend our money on.

There really isnt a party that supports fiscal conservatism nowadays, even though the vast majority of Americans would agree that they think our government spends too much money.

[hineslaw]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

There is a party that supports fiscal discipline, but no one votes for them. They are the Libertarian Party.

Bob Barr, their presidential candidate, was a conservative Georgia Republican who left the Republican party and joined the Libertarians. He'll get about 1% of the vote this November.

H

"More government is never the correct answer."

[shenni]

Re: Breakthrough Debt Documentary to Debut at Sundance; Highlights $62 Trillion U.S.

I was in Vancouver the other week for the opening of the movie and thought that it was well done. Afterwords, David Walker (who narrates it) took questions from the audience.

I would say to others that I don't care that it was developed by the folks at Agora and that they were never mentioned in the film--It has nothing to do with their newsletters! The movie does a great job of explaining to people, in simple terms, how this country got into the financial mess we are in. I have told as many people as I can to go and see it August 21st. Hopefully, it will cause people to "wake up" and begin taking this serious and start holding our elected officials feet to the fire. If not for our sakes, for our children's!