Covel takes us on a cockeyed journey down a rabbit hole of profit, greed, and collapse where the media, government, and Wall Street join hands and lead investors into the abyss of investment loses and foreclosures. In Broke: The New American Dream, Covel travels the globe from buying lottery tickets in Japan to the U.S. countryside where he exhorts a herd of sheep to follow Jim Cramer, 'to find out why we all made the wrong decisions.' He enlists talking heads of investors and traders and Nobel Prize winners, along with a brilliantly-edited barrage of vintage retro clips -- including educational films featuring B-movie stalwarts like Lyle Talbot and Regis Toomey (who plays the character of Mr. Money) -- to detail how we all went wrong and why the 2008-'09 financial collapse should not have come as a great surprise to anybody.
Covel zeroes in on proponents of mutual funds, speculators, and hot stock buyers for the crisis and excoriates the Wall Street marketeers for dazzling investors into a sure-bet mentality -- to ride with the herd for big money profits. But as Covel remarks, 'The moment you start moving with the crowd it's all over.'
The film really laces into the media for promoting these get rich quick scams. As stated in the film, the media told us what we wanted to hear and if explanations were needed the television shows were there to provide them. The Death Star of cable television is CNBC and Broke exposes the grandstanding rhetoric of this big bag of corporate hot air for what it is. Jim Cramer of Mad Money, 'the high octane stock picker,' is hoisted up on his own petard. So much so that even Harry Markowitz, Nobel Prize Winner for Economics, is compelled to chime in: 'How can anyone reason thoughtfully about their portfolio and purchases while yelling into the camera? But Maria Bartiromo, that's okay. She's a cute kid. I mean, I could watch Bartiromo for a couple of minutes.'
A diversion to the art of playing poker results in a few common sense conclusions -- think differently and don't ride with the herd, invest in goods and not companies, and learn to get out while the getting is good.
But these conclusions come rather abruptly. What stays in mind in Broke is the lack of initiative of people with money and an inability to make decisions on their own so that CNBC and Wall Street can make it all easy. In other words, we are all gullible morons and will always be suckers for the next scheme. Like Popeye says in one of Covell's clips, 'And remember folks, a vote for Popeye means free ice cream for all the kiddies.'
Sell! Sell! Sell!
