Movie Review: I.O.U.S.A

Knowing I had a long flight out to Los Angeles last week for vacation, I decided to watch a movie a friend recommended to me a couple months ago: I.O.U.S.A. - One Nation. Under Stress. In Debt. I highly recommend watching the movie in whole as compared to the 30 min byte sized one on their home page. Everyone should watch this movie and realize how scary the facts are about how much debt individuals and our US government are in. 

I believe that all of us who are personal finance bloggers know how serious debt is. We know that with being debt free we start to create wealth for ourselves and family. It is a shame for our government not to be run the way a business is to be successful. If a business or individual goes into debt they start being enslaved by it. Every time they get money flowing in, they turn around and send it right back out and eventually if they cannot save more than they are consuming the only option is to fail and go bankrupt.

I.O.U.S.A. goes into great details about our 4 main deficits - Budget, Savings, Leadership and Trade. The mixture of the four deficits creates a toxic mix that threatens our country and our families future.  They use a lot of animated charts and graphs to explain all of these areas which makes it a whole lot easier to understand. At least for me since I am a visual learner.

Here is the byte size version but like I said earlier I would watch the full movie

Here is just one of the examples of trade deficit using Warren Buffet's parable Squanderville vs Thriftville.

For more information here are some more links.

I.O.U.S.A. The Movie

The Real National Debt

National Debt Clock Runs Out of Digits

Owen and Payne