I can't wait to see this movie

Posted at 9:07 on Tuesday April 18, 2006 | Filed Under Miscellaneous

I'm not really a big dork who only talks about personal finance in real life. Actually, my friends make fun of me because I only like big huge blockbusters. But I'm trying to change that, so I can't wait to see Maxed Out, a new documentary.

In a Newsweek interview with the director, they asked what has changed about the lending industry:

The major change is that the industry discovered that the most profitable consumers were the least responsible consumers—-college students, people who'd declared bankruptcy, housewives [and] people who were consuming beyond their means. People who would pay anything for credit—-any fee or any interest rate because they needed more credit. That's the major change. Before, credit was rationed based on whether you could pay it back, based on your reputation, based on your character to some degree. It's just not that way anymore, and that's a huge change. (Emphasis mine.)

It looks really cool.

Check out...

The movie site (especially the Clips section)
The Newsweek interview

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Comments (4)

1.: Too bad it's not playing anywhere except for the flim festival. There isn't a whole lot on imdb about a release date, either.

Posted by megan at April 18, 2006 09:27 AM

2.: Super Size Me started out as a film festival only movie. I'm sure if it's a good quality movie, we'll see it on DVD in the near future.

Posted by Eric at April 18, 2006 10:09 AM

3.: It's interesting to think about the shifts in consumers' spending ideologies too. The advent of credit in America allowed lower and middle income people real oppurtunities for upward mobility, they treated their credit purchases as investments, generally. Whereas today we might say that consumers are making purchases on credit that will only help them to appear as part of a higher class while foregoing the lasting, material affects of real economic mobility via increases in personal capital.

Posted by Stewart at April 18, 2006 01:28 PM

4.: It's easy to look back on the old days with rose-tinted glasses, but it's misleading. Yes, it's true that up until the 80s, if you weren't affluent, or if you'd had troubles in the past, you weren't able to get credit. You can say this was a good thing, that it saved people from themselves. But try telling that to the guy who wants to raise above his circumstances, for whom that ability to borrow means he can afford to send his child to college, so his child can have a better life than he did. Or to someone who made some poor decisions when he was younger, matured, and then found he wasn't able to buy a home, or have the security of being able to pay his bills for a few months if he loses his job.

Would you prefer that these types of people didn't have access to legitimate forms of credit? That if they really, really needed the money, they would have to resort to pawn shops and loan sharks? Whatver makes you sleep at night...

Posted by Bob at April 24, 2006 05:01 AM

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