I.O.U.S.A - Addison Wiggin [7]
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The Mission 5
We didn ’ t know for sure, but suspected the mortgage market was likely to show the fi rst cracks of a system under stress.
We forecasted an implosion in that market and an ensuing recession led by a slowdown in housing, which so many Americans had begun to rely on as their principal source of wealth. As such, we thought it would be a good idea, if a tad impertinent, to send the book Empire of Debt to all the members of Congress at their home offi ces. We sent a copy to the Federal Reserve and another to the White House. At the time, we were under the impression no one in Washington was paying attention. As long as U.S. dollars were rolling off the presses at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the record seemed to show no one was inclined to worry.
One serendipitous moment would prove us wrong.
On November 14, 2005, the very day we were stuffi ng cop-ies of the book into manila envelopes, USAToday ran a cover story featuring a press conference that David Walker, then comptroller general of the United States, had given before the National Press Club.
“ The United States can be likened to Rome before the fall of the empire. Its fi nancial condition is ‘ worse than advertised, ’ ” the newspaper said, quoting Walker. “ It has a ‘ broken business model. ’ It faces defi cits in its budgets, its balance of payments (the trade defi cit), its savings — and its leadership. ”
That we were mailing a book which effectively drew the same analogy seemed like more than a small coincidence. Little did we know how important Mr. Walker ’ s list of “ four defi cits ”
would become to this project. As you ’ ll see, they would provide both the context and framework we were looking for to help bring a diffi cult, complex, and unsexy message to a wider audience.
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Before we even had a title for Empire of Debt, I got snowed in for several days doing research at Brad and Julie Wiggin ’ s cintro.indd 5
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6 The
Mission
condo in Sugarbush, Vermont. I ’ d taken a slew of reading material and one documentary along with me, Daniel Yergin ’ s The Commanding Heights. Yergin ’ s work follows the ideas of two of the twentieth century ’ s most infl uential economists, John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich A. von Hayek, during the course of their prolifi c lives.
Surrounded by the deep snow, and sitting amidst those books, I used the fi lm Commanding Heights as a diversion. Call me a masochist. By the second run through, I was impressed with the way the fi lmmakers had woven together similar themes to our own. They ’ d even turned economics into an entertaining program for television.
Several months later, the publication of Empire of Debt drew moderate interest from the media. We were featured briefl y in the New York Times magazine. ABC News put us on their 4:00 A.M. slot. The Economist listed us as one of their
“ must reads ” for 2005, based on sales from Amazon.com . The book even made it on to the New York Times business list. But the housing boom was nearing its peak. Most of the media viewed our work with a jaundiced eye.
Recalling the snowed - in episode in Vermont, I decided at that point, naively, that turning Empire of Debt into a documentary would be a good idea. Wouldn ’ t it be easier to hand a friend a DVD and say, “ You have to watch this movie, ” than a 400 - page economic tome on the history of debt in the United States? You ’ d think so. But making a movie, it turns out, involves a few more moving parts than writing a book.
After a few false starts, we got lucky and found the team that would ultimately pull the project together. Jon Carnes, a reader of our Daily Reckoning e - letter, responded to an informal proposal of the fi lm we ’ d written up. Jon, who had founded Eos Funds, a fi rm providing research for hedge funds, had recently invested in a production company in Hollywood. Jon said he ’ d met some producers through the process and could introduce us if