Posted by Marc Hodak on April 26, 2011 under Movie reviews | 
Unlike Ayn Rand, I will quickly get to the end of the story: if you are an Atlas fan, or at least someone with strong libertarian sympathies, you will probably like this movie. You will think the screenplay was a reasonably faithful adaptation of the novel, and may even appreciate the degree to which it wasn’t, leaving out as it did much of Rand’s clunky dialogue. You will think the scenes were visually rich, and the characters were superbly acted. You would be generous, forgiving, perhaps charitable, in your critique.
If you hate Rand, or what you think Rand stands for, then you are likely to be objective, unforgiving, even ruthless. Being in a skeptical mode, you will notice the residual unwieldiness of the screenplay (you simply can’t purge Rand’s writing from her story). You will think that the visuals are cheesy, especially against the standards of modern epics being made for ten times this film’s budget. You will think the acting looked forced because acting generally looks forced when you’re simply not into the story, and you refuse to view this film with the suspension of disbelief that one might normally accord to a cinematic experience.
This simple difference in perspective is very likely why 85 percent of the people who saw this film liked it, and 95 percent of the professional critics hated it. The degree to which critics hated it worse than the viewers like it may account for the legitimate flaws in this film, but more likely that difference is caused by the mismatch between the medium and the message. Rand’s writing style is more Dostoevsky or Tolstoy than, say, John Grisham. Turgid, Russian novels are her literary heritage, and something no sane, modern Hollywood producer would consider committing to celluloid. I’m frankly amazed that producers Harmon Kaslow and John Aglialoro did as well with it as they did.
To paraphrase Mad Men’s Don Draper, “When a man walks into a theater, he brings his whole life with him.” One can claim that they are only reviewing the film on its artistic merits, but reading their reviews and seeing the audience data, their protestations ring hollow. At no time is that pretense laid more bare than when they compare the Atlas Shrugged movie unfavorably against the insipid 1949 production of The Fountainhead. Gary Cooper couldn’t save that hulk. Patricia Neal looked positively psychotic. I contrasted that with Grant Bowler’s sharp performance as the uncompromising Hank Rearden, and Taylor Schilling’s compelling ice princess portrait of Dagny Taggart. They were a pleasure to watch.
I’m not hopeful that this film will be a commercial success. It may not really be good enough for that. I’m certain it would offend Rand’s sensibilities, everything she stood for, really, for her fans to encourage others to see the movie to artificially boost its returns in the hope of getting the sequels done. Ironically, if the film’s parts two and three get made, it will likely be for non-commercial reasons. Could a true Objectivist live with that?
Posted by Marc Hodak on April 17, 2011 under Unintended consequences |
And why should they? They didn’t write Dodd-Frank. But they did lobby relentlessly for greater regulation of, and therefore greater control over, hedge funds. Which led to this:
Jamie Nash, a hedge-fund lawyer in New York, said some start-up managers are nervous that they won’t be able to build an operations or compliance system that meets the SEC’s expectations.
The regulations “are erecting barriers to entry,” Mr. Nash said. “That is going to cause consolidation in the industry of smaller managers into larger managers who have the infrastructure and can afford this.”
A spokesman for the SEC declined to comment.
So, the government decided it had to increase regulations the one part of the financial services sector–hedge funds–that had nothing to do with the financial crisis. And because the government felt compelled to spend gobs of taxpayer cash to bail out financial institution that were too big to fail, Congress created a raft of regulations whose main effect will be to crush entrepreneurship and compel waves of consolidation.
And the people who pushed for this regulation, who inadvertently insisted that the fixed costs of doing business in America are not yet high enough, will be shocked to find that only the big survive. They likely will blame the big companies for the lack of real competition, or they will blame capitalism. They may even blame the economics profession or discipline itself.
Posted by Marc Hodak on April 10, 2011 under Executive compensation, Reporting on pay |
Only, the audience for this announcement wasn’t the shareholders; it was the angry Dutch public:
“Regrettably, I have to conclude that the variable compensation for 2010 threatened to damage the slowly recovering confidence among customers and society,” Mr. Hommen wrote in a letter published Tuesday in Dutch daily De Volkskrant. “I hope that this shows that we take criticism on ING seriously and that we are willing to act accordingly.”
The only thing the bonuses threatened was how Jan Hommen, the afflicted CEO, looked in the media. Mr. Hommen tossed the bonuses back to the company because the mob was angry, and European leaders–both public and private–have an unfortunate history when it comes to angry mobs.
It’s hard to blame the people. They equate bonuses with good performance, and being bailed out and on the public dole with bad performance. So bailed out companies still on the dole and awarding bonuses to management does not compute in the calculus of media-driven public awareness. In the calculus of competition, which the media ignores and is largely invisible to the public, companies need talent. A big part of getting and keeping that talent is total compensation. In that context, the distinction of variable compensation, e.g., bonuses, is not very helpful–total compensation has to be enough to get the good workers. If those workers are individually performing well, even in a crappy bank, you risk losing them and making the bank crappier by failing to give them their bonuses.
Of course, one could argue that the calculus of competition means letting banks fail when they get into trouble, and you wouldn’t get any argument from me. Bailing them out and underpaying their best talent is just a way to slow the dying process, making it much costlier to taxpayers in the short run, and creates moral hazard and misallocated resources that make it far costlier to society in the long run.
