honeymoon cash
December 25, 2006 1 Comment
“But the movie isn’t about fractional reserve banking, any more than it’s about angels getting their wings. It’s about the positive, cumulative, but unseen benefits to many people of individual acts of charity and honesty. It’s also about capitalism: home ownership, small businesses, and sacrificial hard work. That’s why immigrants should be required to take a test on ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ It wouldn’t hurt to have political candidates take the test, either. I suspect that most of them would flunk.”
“‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter!’”
by Gary North
I’ve only recently watched this film for my first time (unlike most other people in the universe for whom this movie is in the realm of childhood gospel) and as much as I can put up with Jim Stewart’s typecast whiny goodie-two-shoes character, I found this film quite irritating.I also think that Gary North confuses the ‘virtues’ of capitalism for that of homegrown ‘All-American’ values– specifically those values of home ownership and small businesses, which are only market preferences, and not virtues.Bailey might have been a swell guy, but his actions of encouraging the grand purchase of homes is at best a case of moral hazard for the low-incomed borrower, and perhaps a tort for putting his banking customers at the unnecessary risk of deposit loss (which is also an issue of moral hazard to some degree on the banking customers part.)