Anything Goes : Will this subsidy for inno-cinemas save small cinemas? by Vasco Phillip de Sousa

True subsidies, without content clauses or covert agendas, would be an interesting option. The problem is that all too often the proverbial road to hell is paved with the best of intentions, and once a governing body is put "in charge" ancient, modern, and very recent history reveal what happens next, and it's not good. i.e. In the U.S. when the gov't recently subsidized dental care for the needy by guaranteeing low interest patient loans would be paid by back by them if the patient defaulted, some unscrupulous lenders took full advantage and swooped in to provide these loans, working in conjunction with a few greedy dentists - and suddenly a massive amount of unneeded dental procedures where being highly recommended, primarily to parents with young children, as well as the elderly. (Knowing these two groups were the most vulnerable to the scam.) After they borrowed from the suggested lenders and received the enormous bills, they defaulted but were still responsible for paying back the loan - just to secondary lenders and at a much higher interest rate. The dentists and original lenders didn't care at all though, since the gov't was still guaranteeing the loans - meaning they'd get paid back, even as the poor patients were now burdened by excessive debt. This EXACT same scenario played out in housing and student loans. So the intention to provide affordable homes and college tuition actually backfired big time - all while the lenders made millions, and the borrowers were screwed over. In fact, the vast majority of colleges and universities actually raised tuition as a result - because, again, they knew they were guaranteed to get paid back, so they maximized their own profit margins. Some suggest that these scenarios were predictable from the get-go, and so were just a ploy for greedy lenders to profit off the backs of the poor and vulnerable, but even if the gov't wasn't complicit and they did have low income students/patients/home-owners' best interests at heart, the exact opposite of what was promised was delivered. Tragically some students have committed suicide over the hopelessness of this debt-enslaved-for-life situation, and the dental and ARM home loans have left many homeless and/or destitute. So much for subsidies to assist the needy.

I realize it's a different situation, but still. The agenda could easily be co-opted by censorship, so that only "acceptable" voices/povs/forms of art are subsidized - effectively silencing all dissent. Again, we only need to look at history to see that this is the exact formula for promoting propaganda while simultaneously putting the kibosh on true freedom of expression. Many would argue that the current move to censor controversial (as in "truth-revealing") online comments is the first step toward this desired but covert agenda. I'm with Voltaire on this issue, (as famously paraphrased by Evelyn Beatrice hall) - “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Once we start drawing lines on what's acceptable and not acceptable, we've moved into dangerous Orwellian territory. So I'd make sure those seemingly well-intended subsidies don't come with Trojan horses, oops I meant content clauses. ;)

Interesting view on subsidized loans, Jean. Debt's a discussion on its own, more than enough material in there for a good script or even a series.

Freedom of expression and finance is a good point. Magazines like Which and Consumer Reports claim that a lack of advertising revenue helps them give more unbiased reviews. I notice a lot of internet "top" lists give higher ratings to companies with affiliate programs. (Remember when BlueHost was always rated the top internet host?)

I'd also like to hear the thoughts of cinemas owners and managers on this. It would be especially interesting to find the views of retired exhibitors, those who know what it's like and no longer have to give diplomatic answers.

You're so right. Money has a way of corrupting and destroying fairness and freedom on every level.

There have been some great films about the financial crisis, but they only dealt with the surface symptoms, never the root cause. That's because it's always taboo to expose the truly powerful and their machinations.

These three infamous quotes speak to this:

"I sincerely believe that central banks are more dangerous to freedom than standing armies." - Thomas Jefferson

"It's good that the people should not understand our banking and monetary systems, for if they did, there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford

"The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board ministers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money" - Charles A. Lindbergh Sr.

On that note, I'll jump off this thread, but since researching this topic was once a passion of mine, I'll leave behind a footnote in case a brave foreign filmmaker wants to do an actual deep dive and expose the true cause of the 2008 Financial Crisis. Because I sincerely doubt an American can.

FACT-BASED & FASCINATING HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE:

The U.S. Constitution mandates that the gov't, which is supposed to be run by the people, issue its own currency backed by gold and silver. Yet central banks have continued to rise and takeover the issuance of money by printing paper dollars (fiat currency) out of thin air, backed by nothing. Of course these central banks earn interest on every single dollar printed, which is why they're extremely profitable. Our "dollars" have "federal reserve notes" on them, when they should be treasury notes - an economic corruption that both Lincoln and JFK tried to undo. (The only U.S. Pres who managed to hold the villainous central bankers off for awhile was Andrew Jackson - a known badass, who famously said the bankers were trying to kill him.)

"The Fed" is not actually federal in any way, shape, or form - despite its deliberately misleading nomenclature. It's a cartel of Int'l banksters that somehow operate autonomously, and have a stranglehold on the economy. Without their interference we wouldn't have boom/bust cycles, since a truly free market is self-correcting based on supply and demand. But when they print too much money (supply), they in effect create inflation. (It's worth nothing that inflation is merely a hidden tax - since we can actually verify that the same amount of gold has retained its purchasing power since The Fed was covertly and conveniently ushered in while congress was nearly vacant - on December 24th, 1913 . - In contrast, the U.S. Dollar has lost over 90% of it's purchasing power during the same period. Courtesy of "inflation.")

Just prior to the Great Depression, the Central Banks eliminated their smaller private bank competition, to consolidate their power. They then proceeded to swoop in and buy up all the deflated hard assets that landed on the floor when the market tanked. - Further enriching themselves, at the people's expense. It was as a direct result of this debacle that the Glass-Steagall Act was implemented, to prohibit this same scenario from every playing out again.

This truly noble Act, which also served as a firewall to prevent the co-mingling of banks and investment companies, was repealed in 1999, during the Clinton administration. Many attribute the repeal of The Glass-Steagall Act to the 2008 Financial Crisis. (Which was never actually resolved, but instead merely swept under the rug by printing more money, and keeping interest rates artificially low - which created the incentive for consumers to take on even more debt and save very little, making the economy look healthy, when it is anything but. But since the U.S. dollar is still the world's reserve currency, at the moment, we control the giant Ponzi scheme.)

Thus, the 2008 crisis was the result of investment companies acting like casinos and packaging and selling those aforementioned "well-intentioned" home loans for profit. This is precisely why many feel like the whole "benevolent posturing to help low-income citizens finally afford to buy a home" was merely a facade. When the foreclosures ensued, the crisis hit. And yet, some of the truly cynical and conniving investment co.'s had placed a counter bet (based on these homeowners failing to pay their ARMs after they re-adjusted) yielding themselves billions - all while the poor got poorer. And as "fate" would have it, those investment bankers who did not counter bet, but actually took tremendous losses on their greedy derivative plays, almost bringing down the entire economy as result - would wind up getting their losses covered - courtesy of a dear old friend. - Enter Hank Paulson, the U.S. Treasury Secretary who just happened to be the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. And as such must have known the jeopardy they were creating with their derivative swaps. Yet somehow Big Bank Hank got congress to agree that the American taxpayers should write a blank check for $700 billion — part of which would go to help the mega-investment bank he once ran, along with many others.

I sincerely doubt that the power structure will allow this true version of the story to ever be told - which is why every film and series about it only exposes the surface level players and not who/what granted them their despicable Casino Royale privileges in the first place. (Privileges that shamefully led to the bankrupting of many hardworking, high risk-taking, blue-collar service workers' retirement funds and pensions.) To add insult to injury, one of the more popular series portrayals of these events inverted the truth - so that those most responsible wind up looking like the heroes of the story. And more often than not, the blame is almost entirely shifted to the home owners for taking the bait and taking out such "risky" loans. Sigh.

To date, eleven years after the fact, only one person has ever been convicted for these mortgage backed securities financial crimes against humanity - which, of course, relied on a highly unethical manipulated credit rating system.

BTW - Wall Street just launched even riskier financial products based on Bitcoin - with no law to stop them from packaging these products and selling them to one another the way they did last time. This prompted the recent FORTUNE magazine cover story entitled "The End is Near." Here's a quote from that article: "The last crisis was undergirded by physical assets in the form of homes. The next one, if and when it happens, will have 1's and 0's floating around in cyberspace."

...Proving once and for all that facts are stranger than fiction could ever be.

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/economy/article24...

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/08/27/re...

https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/16386/why-nobody-went-to-jail-for-t...