It’s a Wonderful Life… to 'Buy Now and Pay Later'
Steve Penfield • Wednesday, December 24, 2025 • 5,300 Words
When Hollywood director Frank Capra finished his pro-war propaganda films ‘Why We Fight,’ his next mission was to declare war on personal thrift. The credit schemes he romanticized were wildly successful for Real Estate middlemen and sleazy Debt Dealers, but deeply harmful for everyone else.
Just a century ago, they were the dominant form of mortgage lending in the nation. This radical new concept (at the time) was a gateway drug for millions of Americans to replace centuries of “thrift” practices of delayed gratification with the Buy Now, Pay Later euphoria that has lured us into over $100 trillion of total debt bondage today. When this heavily advertised “conservative” alternative to fiat credit creation failed in the 1930s, politicians like Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt and their supporters rushed in to reward fiat creditors with a smorgasbord of federal “protections” that survive to this day, providing a false sense of economic security now teetering on collapse. This once-popular concept might be entirely forgotten if it weren’t for one independent movie director (having just completed a series of pro-war propaganda films) who inserted gushing praise for it in his 1946 holiday classic.
The gateway drug for long-term debt financing came from Building & Loan Associations. The film (that failed in its day, but audiences now adore) is It’s a Wonderful Life. And the pro-war storyteller that inserted pro-debt nostalgia in rather underhanded ways was celebrated Hollywood legend, Frank Capra.
American Home Buying before the ‘New Deal’ Cheap Credit Revolution
For over three centuries, the vast majority of American immigrants came here with nothing then proceeded to work, save and invest their own finances to build or rent whatever housing they could afford. There was no thought of being entitled to “affordable housing.” No hint of a 30-year mortgage. And no talk of equating the American Dream with any type of domestic shelter.
Economists rarely admit this today, but thankfully the AI database (here from ChatGPT) is still useful enough to describe what was going on with home buying in the 1800s through the early 1900s, which was nothing like the political climate of today. As of 1800, virtually no one used mortgage financing to build a home. At that time, “the United States had very few banks and almost no housing-finance institutions. … Fewer than 30 banks existed nationwide.”
At the eve of the Civil War, “Before 1860, mortgage use was rare and localized.” After the wanton chaos of Lincoln’s War on the South and the financial shenanigans of railroad creditors, attitudes changed in America, particularly in urban regions of the North. But American thrift still ruled the day… until the next big crisis hit in 1929.
A key takeaway here is that throughout America’s period of explosive growth and far greater independence during the 1600s, 1700s, and most of the 1800s Americans overwhelmingly saved and paid 100% cash for their homes or built houses themselves, often with the help of neighbors and family members. The concept of enjoying something not fully paid for was, among other things, expressly Un-American.
And banks wanted little to do with mortgage lending at the time as well, because they would rather focus on business loans that were more reliable for quick payback, thus more profitable. ChatGPT says: “Before the 1930s, mortgages were illiquid, risky, regulated, and mismatched with how banks funded themselves.”
But the human desire to enjoy things sooner than later, even if it creates significant risks and a future loss of freedom, is perhaps something we will never be completely rid of. The rise of low-quality (government run) schooling in the late 1800s, mass immigration during that period, the corrupting influences of “democracy” itself, or basic moral decline may have all played a role in this gradual move away from personal responsibility, but the AI output does not mention any of those possibilities.
In any case, to meet the desire of some people to Enjoy Now, Pay Later (and ignore some obvious pitfalls involved) a new lending mechanism was invented: the Building & Loan Association. And millions of Americans eventually joined one of those clubs by their heyday in the 1920s. ChatGPT says:
B&Ls almost certainly financed on the order of millions of home purchases—most plausibly in the range of about 3 million to 12 million homes… with the bulk of that activity occurring after 1890 and especially during the 1910s—1930s.
Unlike personal thrift, B&Ls encouraged the buyer to speculate on future economic conditions (ability to pay, steady stream of new investors, perpetual home price increases, etc.) that proved fatal in the 1930s and again in the 1980s with their successor, the “well-regulated” Savings & Loan industry. As for how Building & Loan associations operated, as compared to commercial banks, AI is helpful in filling the void left by mainstream economists that have moved on to other affairs.
*Commercial banking includes Savings & Loan institutions, which were created via federal laws in the 1930s (specifically to target home loans) and can legally participate in fractional reserve credit creation. S&Ls failed in the 1980s for similar reasons that B&Ls failed in the 1930s.
**Some of the “jobs” made necessary by commercial bank home lending include mortgage broker, loan officer/originator, loan processor, loan underwriter, quality control analyst, appraiser of market value, appraisal management company, credit reporting agency, employment and income verification services, title company, title insurance underwriter, escrow agent, closing agent, and real estate attorney. Once the primary mortgage sale is completed, an entire “secondary market” springs into life to service, insure, repackage, audit and otherwise squeeze every drop of “intermediary wealth” out of the mountain of subsidized mortgage paperwork, mostly to the benefit of absentee investors who have never struck a nail with a hammer.
The above list of mortgage middlemen largely excludes the 1.4 million members of the National Association of Realtors, much fewer of whom are needed with thrift (cash) purchasing. Likewise, mortgage complexity favors the other prime beneficiary of chaos (besides fiat bankers): the gossip/slander/advertising industry of our dump-and-run “copyright” mafia. During the 20th century, federally protected newspaper publishers made billions advertising for people and businesses buying, selling and speculating on mortgaged properties.
If you buy into the fallacy of “broken window” prosperity, then you may view the army of mortgage industry middlemen as beneficial to society. Those “jobs” tend to be menial, low pay and parasitic. But bureaucratic overlords are fine with that, as long as people pay taxes and vote as directed. A positive view of mortgage financing also requires a person to overlook the dubious “ownership” concept that is really renting from a bank. The 30-year mortgage (which didn’t exist before the 1930s) means immense wealth transfers from the middle-class and working poor to rich bankers via interest payments for their fiat loans. More pseudo-homeownership also means more property taxes to fuel government schools… that just happen to teach us how credit, inflation and public debt are all positive tools.
If home mortgages lead to an “ownership society” of personal responsibility—as politicians of both parties have been asserting since at least the 1920s—then welfare entitlements should have decreased since then. The expertly “managed” process should also make housing more affordable and property ownership more accessible to the working poor. Of course, just the opposite has happened in recent generations.
If you understand the difference between producers and parasites… then you probably have a better appreciation of personal savings. But some powerful interest groups who thrive on BNPL complexity also have inside access to the halls of power to wage war for their own vested interests.
The ‘American Dream’… with little or no Personal Thrift
During the 1920s and particularly after the stock market crash of 1929, spastic politicians like Herbert Hoover and then Franklin Roosevelt started talking up home ownership as a bulwark against radicalism and a symbol of recovery and security, as summarized by ChatGPT.
The phrase “American Dream” didn’t have common usage in public discourse until 1931, when a writer and historian named James Truslow Adams popularized the term in one of his books. This was time of great social upheaval when academics and politicians were just throwing out crazy ideas to distract the public from one failed scheme after another concocted by central planners. And that phrase was expressly about equal opportunity, not any type of property ownership.
In the 1930s, a crop of unprecedented federal laws sprung forth from those successive Republican and Democrat administrations to boost home ownership—or more accurately, convince people that mortgage financing from a bank was the best pathway to this new civic virtue. Some of those laws and institutions included:
Herbert Hoover’s interventionist actions
1931 National Credit Corporation – designed to mask fiat bank fraud and prop up insolvent banks; this failed badly and led to more desperate political maneuvers.
1932 Reconstruction Finance Corporation – with a similar purpose and results as the 1931 agency. Over 9,000 banks would fail between 1930 and 1933, about “30 percent of the total number of banks in existence at the end of 1929.” (source)
FDR / New Deal legislation
1933 Banking Act – created Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that began operating on January 1, 1934; convinced people to trust fiat banking; grew from $2,500 per depositor in 1934 to $250,000 today. As of mid-2025, FDIC reports a $145 billion insurance fund balance to cover $10.7 trillion of insured deposits—a paltry 1.4% reserve ratio. This would seem like a false sense of security to put it mildly.
1933 Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Act – built upon Hoover’s prior work and “made slightly more than one million loans” for homeowners that were typically “more than 2 years behind on payments.” Although viewed as temporary relief for those who had gambled on home mortgages, HOLC warped housing affordability for everyone by preventing markets from reaching equilibrium (i.e., lower prices that consumers could afford).
Already, these heavy-handed federal actions showed the recklessness of both Hoover and Roosevelt, particularly the latter, who had contempt for Constitutional limits on their power and loved to be seen as national “saviors.” And it was a stark departure from recent precedent when Washington wisely allowed markets to naturally correct during the 1920-21 depression, with no “stimulus” shenanigans or power grabs. But the New Deal flurry of intervention was far from over.
1934 Federal Housing Administration – created to convince people to buy home mortgages from banks, a radical shift from traditional U.S. home buying. Provided federal insurance for mortgages for the first time in American history. Expanded the federal government’s role into local housing, despite no Constitutional authorization for such powers.
1937 Housing Act – this reckless interference would soon invite millions of unqualified buyers into formerly thriving urban communities. By the 1940s, dozens of cities that had been wildly expanding since at least 1850 suddenly stopped growing. By the next decade, most of those cities were in dramatic freefall. During the 1960s, federal bungling led to unprecedented urban riots in hundreds of locations. And many of those cities have never recovered.
1938 Federal National Mortgage Association (a.k.a., Fannie Mae) – created a secondary market for “mortgage-backed securities,” empowering more financial institutions to gamble in the housing market. This agency and its offshoot Freddie Mac were largely responsible for the 2007-09 subprime lending crisis that wiped out $14 trillion in net worth of U.S. households.
1944 Army G.I. Bill – created a housing entitlement for millions of returning WW2 soldiers. It “introduced a home-loan guarantee program that allowed veterans to make a down payment of only one dollar,” according to Wikipedia.
Only after this massive federal intervention was imposed did Americans in significant numbers turn to banks for mortgage lending, the 30-year mortgage was created, and the minimal downpayment (now usually 5% or less) came into existence. All of these were radical transformations from centuries of prior American tradition. And all of those federal interventions were well known in 1945 when Capra began working on his script and film.
A man like Frank Capra, a social conservative who was fond of political crusades, probably couldn’t have imagined so much calamity could have transpired once we got rid of personal thrift in the home buying process. But as a Tinseltown purveyor of scripted melodramas, it didn’t really matter if people got hurt listening to his advice. If Capra & Company could keep audiences entertained for a couple of hours, that would suffice.
After New Deal berserkers were finished, what were once unquestioned values of American thrift and personal responsibility soon became talking points for politicians to gather votes, with both concepts steadily eroding along the way.
Wonderful Life Economics 101: Credit is Good for Everyone!
The 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life skipped over all of those gigantic Hoover/New Deal credit and housing departments to sell a narrative of a friendly, neighborhood home loan association just looking out for the little guy. The first line of the film comes from the voice of an old man saying “I owe everything to George Bailey” and a closing scene includes a Bailey Park beneficiary declaring “I wouldn’t have a roof over my head if it wasn’t for you, George” as he generously pours our money to help pay off the B&Ls accidental $8,000 loss.
Considering the popularity of (heavily subsidized) bank mortgages, the general attitude that “credit is good” seems to be dominant in our culture, at least when it comes to home purchasing. Among legacy media and “sponsor me” influencers, the government creation of long-term home loans is now universally endorsed by all political persuasions. Which means that home loans are now an entrenched ideal that rarely (if ever) gets questioned.
As far as alleged “successes” from that blizzard of federal home-credit bureaucracies, supporters usually point to two dubious factoids to bolster their position. Credit advocates boast that:
These transformative changes contributed significantly to a surge in American homeownership, with the percentage of families residing in owner-occupied homes increasing from 44% to 63% between 1934 and 1972. (under Wikipedia’s section on 1934 FHA, 1938 Fannie Mae, and 1944 G.I. Bill)
Credit interventionists also extol that “from 1933 to the late 1970s” there were “no nationwide banking panics,” per ChatGPT’s response on 1933 banking reforms.
The first claim is dubious because it conflates “ownership” with long-term renting from a bank. Furthermore, the “free and clear” ownership rates among those with homes dropped from 75% in 1900 to only 30% in 2000, as summarized in the first table. It also assumes that home ownership by any means is an unquestionable virtue, which overlooks many secondary effects (entitlement attitudes, rising home prices, urban decline, racial strife, exploding debt load, hyper-legalism and parasitic jobs to manage the whole mess, etc.).
The second claim about no bank “panics” for about 45 years is true on the surface. But it too overlooks the solid argument that New Deal supercharging of the banking industry allowed debt financing of numerous wars since the 1940s and the welfare state since the 1960s. In total, those debt-fuel rampages wasted tens of trillions of dollars while militarizing the economy and driving us to the brink of bankruptcy.
Supporters of the 1930s banking reforms also fail to take any responsibility for the admitted 3,200% inflationary theft over the last century (actually much more according to ShadowStats). And our gargantuan $100 trillion of total public and private debt could be a warning sign for the Mother of All Bank Runs… just a guess.
Before the New Deal Revolution, all of that was unthinkable to most Americans. And fiat credit expansion—backed by the full force of the DC establishment—was and is immensely important for the rise of dystopian corporate-federal cartels that now dominate the economy. That includes bad actors like the infamous Military Industrial Complex, Silicon Valley, FCC Broadcasters, Big Pharma, Big Finance, Big Insurance, Big Auto, Big Unions, Woke Colleges and other predatory entities that are far more extractive than Capra’s local banking villain “Mr. Potter” could ever dream of.
Of course, Washington didn’t stop interfering in local housing decisions after the “emergency” actions of the Great Depression lost their justification at the end of World War 2. Some of the more abusive expansions came via the so-called Fair Housing Act of 1968, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. Those laws catered to economic division, with a particular emphasis on racial bitterness.
With America now enslaved to a host of “entitlement” attitudes, divisive demagoguery from all sides, moronic scapegoating, and total dept exceeding $100 trillion, we can perhaps take a break from holiday celebrations to reflect upon a Christmas “classic” that sold us the American Dream… with no personal thrift. That movie would be Frank Capra’s production It’s a Wonderful Life, released in theaters in December 1946 and now available for home entertainment.
For a man who was supposedly a “conservative Republican” according to Wikipedia, Capra’s attitudes on personal savings aligned better with New Deal liberals like J.M. Keynes, who famously denounced “the evil of thrift” in his 1936 manifesto The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.
How the film Wonderful Life spread its anti-thrift message
In the film It’s a Wonderful Life, director, producer and lead screenwriter Frank Capra took liberties to insert pro-credit, anti-thriftmessaging that had nothing to do with the original short story “The Greatest Gift” that contained none of those themes.
The movie opens on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1945, when hero George Bailey is at his wits end and contemplating suicide. The first line of the film comes from the voice of an old man (not pictured) saying “I owe everything to George Bailey.” This preposterous exaggeration sets the tone for the entire film, which is full of overt hero/villain signaling, emotional manipulation and grown adults acting like helpless victims.
The film then goes back to 1919, with young George saving his brother from drowning when the ice breaks at a frozen pond, losing the hearing in his left ear in the process. Already, George’s father Peter and his forgetful uncle Billy are running an altruistic Building & Loan that gives mortgages to poor locals that couldn’t qualify for conventional bank loans and often have trouble making their payments. Desperate for more capital, the Bailey Brothers appeal to the film’s cruel and savvy villain, rival banker Mr. Potter, who rejects them as “miserable failures” for being too soft on borrowers.
The movie fast forwards to 1928, which is made clear by a huge sign over a high school dance floor that covers as a swimming pool. A few months later, at the passing of Peter Bailey, Potter is advising to dissolve the Bailey’s Building & Loan in order to stop giving mortgages to common folk. George, now 21 and played by James Stewart, responds with a speech how securing a home loan makes people “better citizens” not trapped in Potter’s “slums.”
Using a gimmick fit for Hollywood shysters, Capra conspicuously attacks “thrift” in his film, but not with any honest and rational argumentation. Instead, he puts pro-thrift attitudes into the mouth of cruel banking oligarch, Mr. Potter. The clear implication—as Capra may have learned making his pro-war films—is that: only monsters defend this!
During this meeting with the B&L board, the old and friendless Mr. Potter grumbles from his wheelchair that giving home loans to the unqualified ends up with “a discontented, lazy, rabble instead of a thrifty working class.” (Even this is a ruse, since fiat bankers like Potter instinctively hate personal thrift. They want carefree customers who live beyond their means, willing to accept a lifetime of debt bondage.)
Furthering Capra’s anti-thrift messaging, the film provides a one-sided screed styled on contemporary Building & Loan advertisements, which were abundant at the time. George dismissively rejects the alternative to “wait and save their money before they even thought of a decent home.” George continues in righteous disgust:
Wait! Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they’re so old and broken down that… (trails off)? Do you know how long it takes for a working man to save $5,000? [Then the price of a new home]
A few scenes later, it’s 1932 and a full-fledged “run” is occurring at the Building & Loan. A recently married George barely saves the B&L by using his honeymoon money to pay depositors. Capra smooths over the fraud of an empty institution that made more loans than it had in reserves—the core problem of fiat banking for centuries (and their B&L imitators at the time)—by George giving an impromptu speech on community spirit.
The film makes no mention of the thousands of Building & Loan associations that failed in the 1930s—none of which (presumably) were saved at the last minute by angel investors like George and his lovely wife Mary. ChatGPT says that B&Ls in America peaked at over 12,000 in 1929, then plummeted to about 8,000 by 1939. Almost none survive today in their original form.
With the Bailey’s Building & Loan still in business, it can continue to save residents of Bedford Falls from the ravages of renting from Potter. Especially ones like Giuseppe Martini with his strong Italian accent—an apparent fill in for the director Capra, also an Italian immigrant—and his grateful wife. Mr. Martini is brimming with joy as he proclaims he now “owns” a house (purchased with a Bailey loan) and no longer has to pay rent to Potter to “live like pigs.”
Next, we see Potter’s self-described “rent collector” stooge in a bank office showing him a map of “suckers who used to pay rent to YOU!” Potter’s minion continues: “look at it today, dozens of the prettiest little homes you ever saw,” thanks to the Bailey Brothers’ Building & Loan.
Don’t wait for what you want and don’t pay rent to a landlord were some of the B&L movement’s prime arguments from roughly the 1880s to well into the 1930s. When their unstable schemes failed, Hoover, FDR and their allies in Big Finance used the calamity as an excuse to vastly expand the role of commercial banking in home “ownership.” Thousands of real world “Mr. Potters” won.
Then in December 1945, George’s forgetful uncle Billy loses $8,000 of the B&L’s money by accidentally handing it over to Potter in a folded newspaper. Everyone at the association, including Billy and George, is distraught. But George magnanimously takes the blame when a bank examiner comes to audit their records.
However, a lifetime of personal sacrifices and deferred dreams leaves George losing his faith in humanity. Now facing “bankruptcy, scandal and prison” George Bailey for the first time loses his normally cool composure and snaps at “stupid old fool” Billy and then his own children at home. He even barks over the phone at a female school teacher for no legitimate reason, earning him a punch in the mouth from the teacher’s husband a few hours later.
In his despair and having been convinced by Potter that he’s “worth more dead than alive,” George contemplates suicide. But he’s thankfully rescued by the wiles of guardian angel Clarence and finally realizes that his life did have value after all. In the process, George is shown how horrible his hometown of Bedford Falls, NY would have been without him and his valiant Building & Loan. In the alternate would without George Bailey, the town is now littered with smut shops along with slums owned by Mr. Potter—because no one could possibly buy a house without a banker’s blessing!
In the real world, even after New Deal tumult, the idea that people couldn’t buy a house without the help of a banker was plainly false. (That predicament only became true after skyrocketing inflation in the 1970s made saving cash essentially futile, to the benefit of—once again—Big Finance.)
Towards the end of the movie, a reinvigorated George prays for the will to live again and is granted his wish. Soon the entire community rallies to his defense while George is still facing arrest for his absentminded uncle Billy’s loss of $8,000 of the B&L’s money.
Among the throng of local supporters, the Peter Bailey family’s house servant gladly donates to the fund, saying she’d been saving the money for a husband someday. Even the town tramp, blonde heartthrob Violet, cancels a trip and donates the cash to George instead. One of his Bailey Park beneficiaries declares “I wouldn’t have a roof over my head if it wasn’t for you, George!” as he pours money on the table.
This is the last big distortion of the movie. After that outpouring of public support, even the crusty old bank examiner donates to the Save George fund. And the law enforcement official there to arrest him tears up the warrant. Only in Capra’s make-believe world has the general public ever donated money to save a failing creditor. But if you think that thrift is evil, as famed economist Keynes said in the 1930s and Frank Capra seemed to believe in the 1940s, this all makes perfect sense.
In the final scene, the crowd sings ‘Hark the Harold Angels’ as George, his wife and kids are all beaming with joy. And the angel Clarence finally gets his wings.
Some Endearing Qualities of Capra’s Movie
While the backstory between a community champion battling a selfish corporate banker is lacking in many ways, there are other virtues on display that have made It’s a Wonderful Life into a modern classic. In the film, George Bailey exhibits a long list of personal sacrifices from rescuing his younger brother from drowning, saving his first boss from accidentally poisoning a customer, skipping college to manage the family business after the loss of his father, using his own honeymoon money to pay distressed depositors, then ultimately liberating the entire town of Bedford Falls from the clutches of the loathsome Mr. Potter. In so doing, George consistently puts the needs of his family and community above his own personal desires.
Besides that, he’s popular, charming, handsome and kind to everyone. Yet he retains the moral courage to stand up against entrenched power when necessary. And later in the movie, when George seems ready to give up, he gets a second chance by seeing how much of a positive impact he made to everyone around him.
These are universal virtues admired across many cultures. But they are hardly unique to Wonderful Life.
Similar themes of sacrifice, community, and redemption abound in Hollywood storytelling from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Forrest Gump, Field of Dreams, Pay It Forward, Avatar and probably dozens of other films that have been long forgotten. It’s a Wonderful Lifecould arguably stand out from most of those films for a few other reasons, but those point to more of a superficial nature than the underlying substance of then-personal (now nationwide) home financing.
Wonderful Life is a mainstream film shot on a lavish set with a solid cast of great actors (nothing new) that doesn’t insult the audience’s sensibilities. Its male lead, George Bailey, is adored by his attractive wife, kids and practically everyone around him. It has positive references to Christianity—not just at the closing song of “Hark the Harold Angels” but also the Martini husband and wife each making a crucifix gesture when obtaining their first house, a handful of brief prayer scenes and a guardian angle on a Mission from God. Even these subtle gestures of a strong male role model and some level of personal faith stand out from so much hostility from the usual suspects in La La Land.
Likewise, the film does not use crude language or sexual vulgarity to advance its plot. That could partly stem from the Hays Code morality guidelines in effect from 1934 to 1968. But Wikipedia quotes from Capra’s 1971 autobiography (denouncing Hollywood “hedonists” and its “cheap salacious pornography,” etc.) seem to place the director solidly in the camp of social conservatives.
Perhaps the most unique feature of the film is the independent studio that produced it: Liberty Films. Launched in 1945 by Capra and three business partners, Liberty Films was unlike the five vertically integrated major studios (MGM, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Fox, and RKO) where corporate executives ruled on all creative aspects—along with controlling distribution and theater ownership. This gave Capra greater autonomy in developing characters and advancing plot themes as he saw fit.
To say the least, the pro-family, pro-modesty and pro-Christian tones of Capra’s film, along with its strongly negative depiction of a greedy banker, are all departures from common themes of the major studios of the time that were dominated by Jewish founders and executives. In general, the more “gritty” artistic feel of the movie still shines through in ways that so much corporate schlock from the big Hollywood studios can never quite replicate.
A Film of Many Great Ironies
For all the modern fanfare surrounding It’s a Wonderful Life, perhaps the greatest paradox is how it became a “classic” at all. Oh sure, the dramatic acting and skillful directing played a part. But what launched this forgotten film into the “public domain” was a mistake in 1974 of the copyright holder to file the required renewal paperwork. (At that time, federal law allowed creative artists to renew their “copyright” privileges once after 28 years, giving a total of 56 years of protection. It’s gotten more generous since then.)
Once in the public domain, TV stations could (and did) air it for free. Relentlessly. Only then did the film become a Christmas staple. Nearly two decades later, owners of the underlying music and story rights, Republic Pictures (later sold to Paramount), used creative lawfare to consolidate control of the film in 1993. By then, audiences were hooked and once again, Hollywood executives could reap the royalties.
So an “independent” filmmaker who had initially taken advantage of federal “copyright” protections only had his most cherished movie succeed decades after its unimpressive release, precisely because lucrative copyright privileges were temporarily revoked.
But the intrigue doesn’t stop there. Frank Capra’s Liberty Films, the studio that promoted “community debt,” went out of business less than a year after its first production, Wonderful Life, was released. And his studio failed thanks to the heavy debt load of that same film!
Stranger still, a movie that railed against a greedy banker promoted the dubious Building & Loan scheme that steered millions of Americans right into the clutches of Big Finance when B&Ls collapsed in the 1930s.
It shouldn’t surprise us that an industry like Hollywood that thrives on the concept of “work a day, get paid for a lifetime” has nothing but contempt for the longstanding American tradition of personal thrift. Nor should we be shocked when a clan of elite storytellers use the tropes of hero worship and painfully obvious villains to sneak in subtle messages of deep political controversy.
Looking past the sentimental themes employed for shooting It’s a Wonderful Life, its greatest educational value could be that it gives us a glimpse of public attitudes towards “community financing” at a time of great political upheaval in America. If we’re seeking economic guidance, we should definitely look elsewhere than the fictional character George Bailey and his soft-pedaled contrivance of Buy Now, Pay Later.
Email: spenfieldNY@gmail.com
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