jmwubb If you are planning on watching a good documentary, look elsewhere. This is a thinly veiled partisan screed, and is ridiculously preachy. I'm fine with politics, but don't pass it off as a documentary, because then you are lying. In terms of honesty and neutrality, the movie was horrible. This is regrettable, as it is event that the directors and filmmakers have talent. It was a pity to have this in my Netflix queue. The film's music is decent, and it is clear that the filmmakers put a significant amount of effort into the content. SUBJECTIVE OPINION: The movie places too much emphasis on the political side of lending, and does not take into account people's narcissism and foolish choices. While entities such as Bush may have a share in the lending crisis, it is imperative that blame be placed where blame is due.

Michael_Elliott Maxed Out (2006) ** (out of 4) Sometimes interested but way too one-sided documentary about the evils of banks, credit lenders and pretty much anyone or thing that is rich. The documentary features interviews with people who have lost their homes and other items as well as people who try to explain what the banks are up and why they need poor people to continue to make money. The biggest reasons for this is that people who are late each month have to then pay high late fees and bigger interest fees. The film makes the argument that without all of these additional fees the people at the top wouldn't be bringing in as much money. The other example is credit card companies stalking colleges looking for newly fresh 18-year-olds needing quick money. MAXED OUT tackles an interested subject matter and I personally don't have a problem with them trying to show that banks are evil. I've been on both sides of the coin of being in trouble financially and also working for a bank so I understand how things work. With that said, not once does the documentary ever blame people who borrow stuff that they can't pay back. I mean, if someone makes $2000 a month and get a loan at $3000 a month then of course it's going to lead to trouble. This documentary, even with that example, would have you believe it's the bank's fault and I think this one-sided nature is what really killed the film. There are some sad stories told, some dramatic ones but at the same time there are way too many examples of where people are to blame for what they're going through and not once does the documentary simply ask them what they were thinking. Yes, the financial institute is full of crooked people. Yes it's good that people be warned about them. However, people still need to take control of what they do and this documentary simply ignores that. For the majority of the 87-minutes, the documentary simply looks at the bad things or the questionable things that people do. It also shines a light on certain "credit experts" and mentions how they're usually connected to certain things that speak as being good.

Vincent Rocca Excellent flick. I often felt that people were at fault for their own credit mess and to some extent, I still do.This movie opened my eyes to how many of these credit giants prey on the uninformed and manage to make money through bankruptcies.Someone charges $1000, makes a payment then goes delinquent. The late penalties cause that to become $3000, then after 180 days the bank writes that debt off and sells it at 50% to a debt collector for $1500. The bank still collects their principal, plus whatever payments the original person made, plus $500, plus takes a write off. It seems like a no brainer to hand money out like paper.When a predator offers candy to a child, do we blame the child for taking the sweet bait? No, because the child didn't know better. So are these people at fault?

Joseph K This film is an interesting portrait into the business of lending. You see the many sides of it. You see the many tragic stories of people who spent themselves into insurmountable debt. You see the profitability of debt collection. You see the aggressive expansion of the credit market into areas where creditors wouldn't have pursued before, since they used to not be profitable, like college students, and people with generally low income.What you don't see is why these previously risky and unprofitable sectors of the market have suddenly become profitable. You get the impression that suddenly these previously high risk areas have become profitable because the creditors have expanded into these markets and forced them to be profitable, with new strategies.But this is naive. Profitability has dramatically increased and new markets have become open to creditors because interest rates have been steadily dropping, to now rock bottom lows. A central factor is debt is the interest rates, and its hard to really praise a movie about the debt industry that doesn't even mention changes in interest rates or how the interest rates are are tampered with by the Federal Reserve. Consumer lending is extremely profitable, as the movie says, but it hasn't always been so profitable, and if you fail to make an argument about what has been the important change, you're left with an incomplete and misguided movie. The assumption is that people have somehow become addicted to spending and that the credit card companies are exploiting this addiction. And yet for some mysterious reason used to not spend as much as they do now.The reality is that the credit card companies previously didn't expand into these untapped markets precisely because they were way to risky and would result in more losses from credit that is never repaid than profits from late fees interest. But once the Federal Reserve drops the interest rates down to unprecedentedly low levels, the risk changes and even those people who may not be ultimately able to pay beck their debt, can become profitable. But God forbid anyone should want to blame the Federal Reserve and Alan Greenspan for all of the irresponsible spending.You see, when you lower the interest rate it doesn't just effect spending but it also effects saving. Lower interest rates mean lower returns on savings accounts, as well as lower losses on debt. It becomes more desirable to spend what money you have now (why save money you're going to earn almost no interest on?), and then continuing spending what money you don't even have yet. It's always preferable to have things now than have things in the future. So if a store offers you a plan where you buy a TV interest free for six months, then you can just say, "So what if I have don't have the money now, I'll have it in six months. If I buy the TV now, then I can enjoy the benefits of having the new TV and put off the costs of paying for it. That's a double bonus." The conclusions of the movie seem to be that we need is to regulate the credit industry to help all of these people who can't take care of themselves. Maybe we'll install credit cards with some sort of child-proof lock, which will somehow becomes active when you're about to make an imprudent purchase. More likely, though they would just raise the minimum age for getting a credit or regulating the credit limits available to low income people, or something like that. Both ideas sound equally bad. A better idea might be to prevent the Federal Reserve from tampering with interest rates so that we don't continue to encourage an ultimately unsustainable spend-now-pay-later economy in the mistaken belief that somehow the economy is driven by consumer spending.In short, this movie will show you a lot about the credit industry that you didn't know. If it serves any benefit, it will hopefully scare you out of spending yourself into insurmountable debt. Nonetheless, without any insight into what actually contributes to consumer debt (which includes economic factors, like interest rates) then the movie degrades into an anti-big-business polemic of misplaced blame.