Maxed Out

"And you know, I run into some very smart people in our Congress and I ask the question...so what's the long-term plan here, what happens when the bills come due? What [do] the grand thinkers have in mind here? And all I ever get is this sort of blank half-smile." -Liz Warren

While preparing this blog's election series, I noted that most of the documentaries out there dealt with foreign affairs. The few which stepped outside the bounds of national security and international relations tackled trendy issues like global warming, the energy crisis, and universal health care. But this year, the economy crept up on the election and suddenly, without warning, took it hostage. I didn't see any docs that dealt with the economy as a whole, but ran across Maxed Out on Netflix and though the emphasis seemed to be on credit cards rather than the national debt (though it promised to address that too), I figured it was a decent compromise. It turned out to be more than that - it is indeed the most prescient film I've watched so far. Unlike many other documentaries which race after current issues to record them before they've slipped into history, Maxed Out saw the storm on the horizon. Watching it today, about a year and a half after it was released, in the wake of the meltdown of the debt-based U.S. and world economy, is an eerie experience.


By now we all know that bad debt isn't just a personal problem, nor a societal one whose toll will someday reach us. It's an addiction and we've suddenly OD'd. This is the morning after, and the waves of nausea are just beginning to hit. It's only going to get worse. By the way, how did we treat the problem? With a hair of the dog that bit us - the government borrowed more money to lend to people who had been borrowing and lending irresponsibly in the first place. This doesn't mean the bailout/rescue/whatever plan was not necessary, and the jury's still out on if this particular solution (which looks increasingly thoughtless) will address the ailments or add to them. But it's more evidence that debt extends all the way up the pyramid: the have-nots are in hock to the haves, who are in hock to the have-mores, who are in hock to China. It's a completely unstable structure.

Maxed Out takes place in a world sixteen months in the past, which already feels like ancient history. Its predictions have begun to come true and those blank half-smiles have become all too familiar. This is a thoroughly comprehensive documentary, slickly and entertainingly made, which tackles all aspects of the problem. It begins with a woman who arrogantly speaks of living in a gated community, ensuring that no trailers come in to spoil the real estate value. To the cue of "Under Pressure" we see images of a society suffering from the same sickness at every level: the desire to have more than we could afford, the actual need to survive from credit to credit thus building up debt, the predators who makes loans to people who can't afford them, the collectors who converge like sharks on those who can't pay, and the government who is not just in the pocket of the credit card companies but also in massive debt of their own. Ever seen those posters with a series of increasingly large fish swimming up behind one another, ready to eat the next in line but oblivious that they themselves are going to be eaten? That's this movie.

Though not airtight (its final montage goes on too long and then ends with a whimper), this is a relatively smooth package given all its disparate parts. Among other approaches, it employs the now-ubiquitous technique of comic found footage: the most outrageously hilarious being an old TV show where the bank is out of funds and a cowboy saunters up to the counter and insists, "We must be able to find money somehow!" The cowboy? Ronald Reagan himself, yet another way in which life imitates art. We get a look at the infamous debt clock, ticking off the trillions that our government owes, are informed that our personal share is $90,000 and reminded that Bush has doubled the National Debt in his eight years in office.

But much of the movie is focused on the bottom end of the spectrum: those who are suckered into credit cards and home loans which they cannot pay off, until they're hit with fees worth more than the original purchases. Sometimes this leads to suicide, as in the case of two college students who got in over their heads and the older woman who was frightened enough by her debts to drive her car into the lake. We get a peek at smug debt collectors who badger the debtors, boasting about how they enjoy the "competition" of harassing their victims. Revealingly, they also speak of living the good life on their earnings, revealing an inclination to spend spend spend which will probably lead them into debt as well. The victimizer becomes the victimized, and so on.

Apparently some have found Maxed Out to be too focused on the evils of predatory lending, without paying attention to the those who are irresponsible with credit. Funny, that was not my impression at all. Yes, the movie rightfully focuses on those who abuse their power and reminds us that the big companies make most of their money off of customers who are addicted to easy credit - that, as one investigative reporter points out, the worst offenders are not local loan sharks but the big banks. But that's just it - the movie is focused on irresponsibility; except it reveals that those on top are as, indeed more, irresponsible than those at the bottom. The fundamental point is that no one was at the wheel, and the Titanic's sinking. While Maxed Out's makers warned of the iceberg ahead of time, and could justifiably crow about their presience, I somehow doubt that their prophecy is providing them much consolation.