Maxed Out

D-

Directed by James D. Scurlock

America's recent credit crisis has spawned a number of documentary films which investigate the roots of the American obsession with credit, the predatory practices of commercial banks, and what it all means to the American consumers. While some of these works have been intelligent, nuanced, and responsible in assigning blame to both major culprits in the debacle, namely commercial banks and the American public, others, such as James D. Scurlock's manipulative and unintelligent "Maxed Out" have decided that the best way to explain America's credit woes is by presenting the problem as Corporate America preying on the helpless public.

"Maxed Out" opens with the woefully overplayed 1950s black and white public service schtick where a guy named "Mr. Money" is explaining to two young clean cut teenagers the wise use of credit. We then cut to a number of interviews with debtridden individuals, their families and their friends. Scurlock's film focuses mostly on highlighting the predatory lending practicies of commericla banks to mostly credit unworthy, high risk individuals such as those with previous histories of bankruptcy, the unemployed and low income earners. Scurlock intersplices his film with interviews from one (count it!) business expert who explains the nefarious work of the big banks to destroy middle America. Scurlock somehow weaves in a strand about governmental spending and finds a way to use some Katrina footage and blame George W. Bush for a bunch of stuff. Original.

"Maxed Out" is bad in so many different ways, I feel like I need to lay it out in point form. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, Scurlock's film lacks a considerable amount of focus from the outset as it offers up a number of vignettes meant to show us ther personal side of debt but never really gives us a clear indication of where it's going. We eventually find out that the crux of Scurlock's film is that debt is, for the most part, the fault of commercial banks preying on poor consumers who need credit, a risible conclusion. "Maxed Out" also attempts to draw a number of links between governmental and personal finance, treating use to a montage of recent American presidents announcing deficit spending measures while a jangling score plays in the background. As both of my intelligent readers know, deficit spending by governments is in no way, shape, or form like personal "deficit spending" and is indeed part of most government's fiscal duties during economic slowdowns. The problem with American governmentla spending is that they never responded to their deficit spending by raising taxes during inflationary output gaps, not that they "spent money the didn't have" as "Maxed Out" puts it.

The biggest problem with "Maxed Out," however, isn't its sloppiness or its dubious grasp of basic economics but rather its refusal to admit that it took two to tango into America's massive debt problems. Of course predatory lending from commercial banks has played a large role in getting so many Americans, especially low income Americans, into crushing debt. The folly of commercial bank lending in the US was shown in its full, ghastly, array during the recent credit crisis and I would challenge anyone to argue that the lending practices of major American banks isn't mostly to blame for the American culture of debt. On the other hand, however, someone needed to have accepted these loans at ridiculous interest for there to actually be a problem and, as we all know, far too many Americans were more than willing to spend, spend, and spend some more on credit. "Maxed Out" gives little more than brief lip service to the personal responsibility of American consumers in taking on massive loads of debt, spending more of its time trying to convince the viewer that crushing personal debt is a weapon rich commercial banks use to to terrorize the American poor. As the child of parents who lived frugally and responsibly their entires lives to support their children, keep their debt low, and pay off their home mortgage early despite a relatively low income, I find this pretty insulting. "Maxed Out" features numerous interviews with individuals shouldering huge debt who defend themselves by saying that the banks were making easy credit available so they figured that if the money was there, they must be able to afford taking it. The onus is then put on the banks for making the credit available when in most likely should never have been offered. I certainly agree, as I said before, that the banks deserved to be savaged for their reckless lending, but Americans need to fess up to the fact that they love credit. One of the reasons American banks could afford to offer up so much credit at such ridiculous interest is because there has always been demand for it. Does anyone really think Citigroup could get away with offering credit at 29% interest to the Japanese or the Chinese? No way, and that isn't because East Asians are smarter than North Americans. It's because they don't want expensive credit. It's as simple as that.

Scurlock's attempts at emotional manipulation also deserve to be pointed out with a fair deal of contempt. He ends his documentary with the parents of two teens who had been crushed under a mountain of credit card debt explaining how their children,, crippled by hopelessness at repaying their loans, decided to take their lives instead. Coldplay's "Trouble" plays softly in the background as Scurlock zooms in on the teary eyes of one of the mothers.

"Maxed Out's" message is completely undone by its effort to frame the credit crisis as class warfare as opposed to a simple case of large scale consumer and lender recklessness, which it was. It further sinks itself by trying to draw parrallels between personal and governmental finances which will be immediately recognized as faully by anyone who has scored a "C" in Introductory Macroeconomics. This is documentary filmmaking at its worst: Manipulative, ignorant, uninformative, biased, and driven by a message that is purposefully innacurate.