The Daily Reckoning U.S.A. & Agora Financial teams launched the official website for I.O.U.S.A. today. At the site you can meet the artists, find out more about the book which inspired the I.O.U.S.A. movie and pre-order the soon to be released I.O.U.S.A. book.
An excerpt from the site:
Wake up, America! We’re on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. As the Baby Boomer generation prepares to retire, will there even be any Social Security benefits left to collect? Burdened with an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, overextended entitlement programs, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor, America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions.
Throughout history, the American government has found it nearly impossible to spend only what has been raised through taxes. Wielding candid interviews with both average American taxpayers and government officials, Sundance veteran Patrick Creadon (Wordplay) helps demystify the nation’s financial practices and policies. The film follows U.S. Comptroller General David Walker as he crisscrosses the country explaining America’s unsustainable fiscal policies to its citizens.
With surgical precision, Creadon interweaves archival footage and economic data to paint a vivid and alarming profile of America’s current economic situation. The ultimate power of I.O.U.S.A. is that the film moves beyond doomsday rhetoric to proffer potential financial scenarios and propose solutions about how we can recreate a fiscally sound nation for future generations. Pointedly topical and consummately nonpartisan, I.O.U.S.A. drives home the message that the only time for America’s financial future is now.
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The Daily Reckoning offers an independent and critical perspective on the Australian and global investment markets. Slightly offbeat and far from institutional, The Daily Reckoning delivers you straight-forward, humorous, and useful investment insights from a world wide network of analysts, contrarians, and successful investors. Founded in 1999, The Daily Reckoning is published in 7 countries with a worldwide readership of almost 1 million people.
Comment by Cameron on 21 August 2008:
Unfortunately, this is a train wreck heading directly to the youth of America. Only THEY can change this. Young Americans rise up and take your future back. Because the adults of today have stolen your future from you.
Comment by zx1z on 22 August 2008:
Looking forward to seeing the movie
Comment by John Wood on 24 August 2008:
This idea that we're heading into some sort of financial armegeddon is a counterproductive short term perspective that misses the big trend.
The big trend is the ongoing development of emerging economies that started when Mao died. Since then the US consumer has been stimulating the world's emerging economies by buying cheap stuff from them and running up huge deficits. Those emerging economies are now developing on a sustainable basis and require less and less support from the US consumer. The US consumer should be awarded the Noble Peace prize for this.
The Beijing Olympics symbolizes China's emergence as a developed economy just like the 1964 Tokoyo Olympics marked Japan's emergence and the 1988 Seoul Olympics marked South Korea's economy's emergence. In the 20 years following the Tokoyo and Seoul Olympics their societies's economies had developed to the extent that they were able provide standards of living that are more or less equivalent to those in the US and other developed economies.
I believe that next 20 years will see standards of living in China and other developing economies rise to more acceptable levels.
This trend is being fueled by the increasing adoption of democracy and capitalist economic policies since Communism's collapse in 1989 along with increasing use and effectiveness of information and communication technologies by individuals. As a result, the big trend is unstoppable.
Backward geopolitical steps such as the recent Georgia occurrance may slow the process but they can't stop it.
Since the trend has become sustainable in the last few years, it is now time to begin the process of balancing the deficits that provided the stimulus. The recent decline in US imports and the increase in US exports are the first steps in the very long term rebalancing process.
I expect that this will gradually see more of a focus by nations on each others comparative advantages rather than on nationalistic rivalries.
Managing this process effectively requires an empathetic and open minded attitude towards to our new partners in the global economy because their success is our future
I realize that fear mongering makes better press and sells more books and movies but this playing on our natural predisposition to listen to bad news is intellectually dishonest and counter productive.
Comment by Me on 24 August 2008:
I hpoe y'all don't get your hopes too high, it is said to be very different from Bonner and Wiggin's book "Empire of Debt" that it is supposedly based on. Check out this review:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/022449.html
Comment by Nick Marshall on 25 August 2008:
It may well be that this will be China's century but it will surely encounter stiff headwinds. I can see no ïncreasing adoption of democracy at this time - the Chinese leadership could not even see fit to leave the internet alone during the games, Chinese were allowed to register for protests, only to be arrested! I think further advancement along the democratic front will only come with bloodshed - as it always has. Along with political problems there are huge environmental problems to overcome. while the leadership is recognising that pollution is a huge cost, it is faced with the problem of trying to include the 600 million rural chinese to a similar level of prosperity as those in the urban vanguard. The west has, relatively speaking, equal problems because we are faced with adapting to a less energy intense way of living - that is if we are going to address carbon output and husband our diminishing liquid and gaseous fossil fuels. Clean coal is a laughable idea. Trying to sequester a fraction of the CO2 output would require more infrastructure than currently exists to deliver gasoline and distillate to users.
This is not about fear-mongering, it is about the slow realisation that the world has been living beyond its suatainable means. The good news is that there are so many ways that we can cut energy use.