Cortechba Overrated

SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

haasxaar Globalization is a polarizing topic. This documentary was made at a time obviously before the obvious nadir for free market economics of this year, 2008. With the fall of Lehmann Brothers, Bear Stearns, Chrysler, GM and the precarious situation of many other large conglomerates the hypotheses have been discredited slightly that have been presented here.A new era is dawning as I write this. The cycles that have been depicted here in Part 1 are continuous and the "Austrian School" cycle is in its last days, in my humble opinion. This documentary shows, truthfully, how Keynesian economics was discredited and replaced in the Western Economies after the turbulent decade of the 1970s. What isn't mentioned is that several other western powers did not embrace the market-solutions of the USA and UK. France, Germany, Scandinavia and Japan all continued to follow certain Keynesian parameters. The miracles of Hayek-style solutions is portrayed with little counterbalancing examples of its negative sides.PBS has really tried hard to give an extensive depiction of the development of globalization since the war. There was much here that I did not know before. The many interviews with Sachs, Clinton, Cheney, de Soto and numerous Heads of State or former Heads of State from Asia and Europe. However, the skew in favour of the process of globalisation is all too evident. Few dissenting opinions are detailed or extensively dealt with. The usual arguments of pulling several people out of poverty, and the industrialisation of the developing world are constantly reiterated to imply, cleverly, that globalisation is an irreversible and beneficial process to everyone. However, I am well versed in this topic, and my reading does not extend to Naomi Klein and Michael Moore, but the problems and difficulties that accompany globalisation are not really even hinted at in this documentary.What this film shows is a good start. A good basis for knowledge for beginners about globalisation. However, my advise is get out and read, get out and discover. There are many issues left untouched in this documentary. It is amazingly interesting to look back at this film after the failures of the Bush administration and watch Richard Cheney say that few people have been harmed in the process of globalisation. We all know now that Cheney is not exactly someone who really has altruistic instincts as his core beliefs.I'm giving this documentary 7 out of 10 because its technical quality and depth with the amount of information and many interviews. However, its rightward tilt slightly unnerved me. Yet it does deliver a rational argument, despite being incomplete, about the whole discussion that does dominate a lot of contemporary political debate. So watch it and start reading.

jim-2320 I am a student of Austrian Economics. I was pleased to see Hayek fairly treated in a documentary, and Keynes ideas mostly discredited. However, one cannot discuss the effects of Keynesian economics and world politics without also discussing central banking. The central bank and it's evil spawn; fiat money is the vehicle for government intervention. Without a central bank in control of money and credit, deficit spending would be strangled in it's cradle. Without deficit spending, the socialists would never prevail. That is why one of the 10 planks of the communist manifesto is the control of all money and credit through a central bank. Again, some interesting history is available in this documentary, but it provides a distorted view of economics. Hayek was right, and Keynes was wrong. This documentary would have you believe that the political class was attracted to Keynes on principled grounds. Hogwash! The attraction is obvious: Money and power. Hayek denied them this, which is why they hated him.

howToDie One thing notable about this movie is a remarkable collection of interviews with a number of international textbook economists, shadow politicians, and powerful tycoons. Take Dr Milton Friedman for example. What other popular presentation would boast 20 plus minutes of footage of this iconic economist? But leaving the entertaining visual impact of headshots of the smart, the rich and the powerful, there's not much else positive to say about this 6 hour film which is as ridiculously long as it is ridiculously fictitious. The thesis of the movie can be summarised as "the only economic system which guarantees long term economic prosperity and political stability is free market". This controversial claim has never been settled in the academic circles, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_capitalism#Market_failures for example. So, it is no surprise that the inherent weakness of the thesis invites the extensive use of *weaker forms of arguments* to advance their position including (a) omission or downplaying historic facts contradicting the thesis (e.g. the Nazi Germany was a free market economy, the Great Depression happened under free market conditions, the communist USSR had marginal poverty rates while the free market USA never went down past double digits), (b) failure to mention more plausible explanations of surveyed historic events (e.g. the dramatic fall in prices for copper, the major source of income for Chile, and the CIA efforts in destabilising the political situation during the Salvador Allende term), (c) trivialization (e.g. the suggestion that the visit of a *free-market revolutionary* Margaret Thatcher to Poland in 1989 ultimately led to Poland independence),(d) false claims (e.g. removing price controls in India resulted in less red tape)(e) fantasies (e.g. a Soviet defector who finally revealed to the West that the USSR was economically doomed was illegally transported across the boarder by two British individuals in a car boot)(d) claims lacking substantiation / causal explanation (e.g. the Polish shock therapy worked while the Russian did not despite similar political situation) (g) conflating ideas (e.g. balancing the budget in Bolivia which brought economic stability had nothing to do with the movie's thesis)(h) conclusions which do not follow (e.g. the Russian financial crisis 1998 gave the country the second chance)So although the movie fails in presenting a coherent logical support for the thesis, it also succeeds remarkably (according to its IMDb ratings) in persuading the uninformed viewers that free markets and resulting globalisation is the only panacea for economic and political ailment. In fact the movies is so bad, it could be a class-room case study of successful public indoctrination. Summary: avoid unless you are in the process of writing an essay on corporate/government propaganda.

paulo-1 The subject of Commanding Heights is the globalization of world trade in the 20th century. It does so in three-two hour installments. Part 1 shows how the world moved from market economies to planned economies and back to market economies in a century. Part 2 shows the impact, sometimes painful, of moving to market economies. Part 3 addresses the current and future problems of a globalized world. That's the structure. The brilliance here, and there is much, is how clearly, thoroughly, and excitingly the stories are told. This is not an economics lesson; this is high drama that impacts peoples lives. Commanding Heights shows that it is people who create the ideas, it is people who accept or reject them, it is people who profit or suffer by them. The series travels to the locations where events happened, and in many cases, interviews the people who made them happen, from Bill Clinton to Milton Friedman to workers in various countries. The pacing of the series is also excellent. It is amazing how many topics are covered in little time, yet, the pace does not seem rushed. Even if you have no interest in business, Commanding Heights is still fascinating to watch. There is also an accompanying website with background information on the history, people, and ideas presented. Commanding Heights is a triumph.