I.O.U.S.A. News and Partial Summary

I had the chance to see IOUSA on July 22nd at the Agora Symposium in Vancouver B.C. Unfortunately, the movie was originally scheduled to start @ 8:00 PM, but the time was changed to 7:15 so I ended up missing a good chunk of the film.

Based on what I did see plus the Q&A with David Walker afterwards, I would say there wasn't a lot about the Fed's involvement in the crisis. In terms of solutions, Walker is touring the U.S. Trying to bring awareness of the problem. He wants to see statutory budget controls in place to rein in Congressional spending. He also thinks taxes should be raised, but not before the budgetary statutes are in place. Walker does not believe we can inflate our way out of this problem since a big percentage of our social programs are indexed to inflation. He encouraged audience members to go to www.pgpf.org and check out the Citizen Action section. He stated the at politicians need to "feel the pain."

A few notes on the last 45 minutes or so of the film:
- China's growth profiled together with concern about their US $
holdings
- Economic blackmail possibilities and history lesson of when US forced
Britain & France to withdraw from Suez over threats to dump the
pound
- Bush doubled the amount of US debt in 6 years - We're dependent
on the kindness of strangers
- The $ has gone down and debt ballooned as a result of 12 Fed tax
cuts and 3 Bush tax cuts
- Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was fired because he wouldn't lie as
requested by Bush administration (audience applauded)
- Great Republics fall due to internal problems: moral, over-extended
military and financial trouble
- Some stats on government obligations:
$53 trillion in total government obligations
Assets: "zip" - problem is much bigger than people understand
We're facing a doubling of Federal taxes by 2040 if current trends
continue
- Profile of David Walker and his resignation 6 years early. He was
frustrated because he couldn't advocate certain fiscal policies.
- Ron Paul shows up with a short quote about the fact that we can't
keep doing what we're doing while the printing presses roll in the
video

In terms of future showings, the following announcements were made:
- Nationwide simulcast of the film coming up on August 21st followed
by "Town Hall" discussions
- 8-minute version available on YouTube now with 30 minute version
coming "soon"
- 30,000 DVDs will be sent to Agora Financial members on October
21st. Attendees were encouraged to share the DVDs, but were
warned against
putting these on YouTube
(Apparently there are still some minor edits to be made and. The
producers think they have a shot at an Oscar and distributing on
YouTube would ruin that chance. They do intend to make it available
on YouTube sometime, but not before the Oscars.)
- A nationwide television showing of the movie is scheduled for
sometime in January, 2009
- IOUSA book coming out, don't know the date

On an additional note, an audience member said that 1 million "young people" are planning to go to Washington D.C. On August 16th. Don't know what the name of the gathering is, but she thought these people would be ripe for the message of IOUSA.