The Housing Bubble

Every now and then you come across titles with few votes and high ratings. In the documentary genre, this can mean that you've struck gold and found a great documentary yet to be discovered.

With 32 votes and user reviews being veeery supportive, I took one for the team and watched this last night. And I'm sorry to say it's not gold. It's not worth your time even.

It's just random clips of people talking about the housing crisis without any timeline or central thread. Mixed in are cartoon clips and ever so often a narrator voice. There is no movie here, this is a playlist of people and cartoons.

You might think that the people at least would be interesting, but they're not. They're the classic libertarian voices complaining about leadership and policies. In the end you get the picture that the US economy is doomed and all of it will come to an end quite soon. And sure, they are correct in some ways, but the people in this movie offer no real alternatives. It's all about complaining. Ron Paul has some alternatives, but they are at least questionable and in a good documentary you would get the counter arguments presented as well. Here there is none of that.

All who witnessed the crisis understands there needs to be changes done to credit lending. Debt, the FED and stimulus packages in the US are not perfect but this movie offers no real alternatives. The problems are very complex and any good solution will probably be a nuanced one which take into account the many possible ramifications.

If you want to watch a good documentary on the housing bubble, go watch Inside Job, but you probably have already. If you rather watch fiction, go watch The Big Short.