The Road

Our budding proto-corporations at work, hawking and scrounging for resources

Walking out of the theater, I was left totally speechless for a good sixty seconds (which is when my Blackberry went off). But those sixty seconds at the end of my six-hour lunch break, standing there with one of my mistresses on the way back to my uncle's hedge fund office, I felt like I had a true moment of free-market transcendence.

You see, I have never seen such a stunning metaphor for the perfect libertarian utopia. If you haven't read the book by Cormac McCarthy--which I haven't, of course, though I suspect this fellow might be related to my hero Senator Joe McCarthy (RIP)--this is an excellent story about the cut-throated nature of the Free Market.

In this dark vision of the future, a man and his son travel through a post-apocalyptic America in a quest for capital and resources. Jockeying for survival among other humans (allegories for businessowners), these decrepit warriors compete (kill each other), merge (join forces), and commit hostile takeovers (eat each other) in a quest for dominance.

This nameless family, the man and the son, a clear metaphor for a joint biz partnership—or possibly the American family unit, I'm not sure—essentially wander through the country scouting for (metaphorical) investment opportunity, enjoying some (direct quote) "delicious" Coca-Cola (KO 57.42 buy) and Del Monte peaches (DLM 10.94 a steal at that!). What I'm getting at is that product placement was fantastic, even in this grim post-apocalyptic world.

The strange thing was, the whole post-apocalyptic every-man-for-himself thing was very emotionally resonant. (I know what you're thinking: MacDougal, you old bastard, don't get soft on me now! But bear with me for a moment.) I was fondly reminded of my days at Harvard in the MBA program, where game theory was always at play and "friendship" was merely way of taking advantage of your enemies in order to steal their contacts and fuck their fiancees.

There's also this thing about the world being destroyed, poverty, some bullshit like that, but that was really only secondary to the main story about the virtues of the free, free market.

Rating: $$$$$ (5 USD / 5 USD)
BUY : Coca-Cola (KO), Del Monte (DLM), other post-apocalyptic resources

Where the Wild Things Are

Goldschläger and McDougal: A natural combo

Since we're coming right off an election, before I get on with my review of this film, I want my readers to join me in pouring out some Goldschläger in memory of former New Jersey Governor John Corzine. This guy was a great friend of mine at Goldman Sachs and at Harvard, and an upstanding capitalist. This man knows how to get things done, and knows where a billionaire's place is--in a position of power, preferably one where he can preserve that power and extend it nepotistically. God bless America.

Corzine truly was the Berlusconi of the US. What are we going to do without more people like him in office––people who understand the people of our country (and how much better than them the rich are! Ha!). Oh, that's right, I guess we still got Bloomberg (mayor of New York), Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Bob Corker (R-TN), Jim Webb (D-VA), John McCain (R-AZ), John Kerry (D-MA), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Steve Pearce (R-NM), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Bob Bennett (R-UT), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Herb Kohl (D-WI)... I can go on all day, but basically a full 40% of the Senate is comprised of millionaires like me. I guess I feel like my interests are pretty well-represented. I don't know why the US even bothered changing the system of governors appointing Senators in 1913--it hasn't seemed to change the composition! Thanks, America, for recognizing that the rich truly are better than the rest of you poor fucks!

Anyway, back to the movie. Where the Wild Things Are is a cute little parable about offshore tax havens. The protaganist, a sprightly young investor named Max, chances upon an island populated by exotic natives with no minimum wage laws, and apparently no corporate or property taxes either. Using his Western business acumen*, our hero puts the Wild Things to work doing various sorts of menial jobs, bringing the American value of hard labor to the unenlightened natives. (Apparently they don't have union laws on their island! Sounds like paradise to me.)

Max, the de facto company president and primary investor on the island, wearing his CEO crown.

Things start to get kind of messed up when it turns out Max ain't worth his shit as a manager. While the Wild Things are toiling away building Max's new condo complex, typical employee troubles start to simmer up. Max attempts some new-agey remediation and group therapy B.S. (whereas a wise manager would lay them off and outsource the job). Of course, his attempt fails, and Max is forced to abandon his condo-building dream and return empty-handed to his mom's house.

For the younguns, it's a good story about first investments, how they can go wrong, and how important managerial skills are, particularly when exploiting foreign laborers who aren't familiar with the American ideals of mindless wage slavery (which reminds me, retail's looking good right now, i.e. Wal-Mart WMT: 53.62 and Kohl's KSS: 54.46. Invest while wage slavery's still hot in the recession!). Trust-funders like my own kids will appreciate the film for its end moral: If an investment goes sour, you can always come crawling back to mom and dad.

RATING: $$$$$ ($4 USD / $5)
BUY: Wal-Mart (WMT), Kohl's (KSS)
SELL: offshore investments on islands with unenlightened natives


*note that this article has Harvard Business School jargon throughout that non-MBA grads might not understand. Though if you don't have an MBA, you probably shouldn't be reading this movie blog in the first place.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Okay, wow, it's been a hard year for Mike McDougal, MBA. After losing my board position at Goldman Sachs and having to mortgage, then mortgage my mortgage, then time-share (I cringe to think) my properties in Dubai, Vegas, and Manhattan, I was feeling pretty low. I almost had to stoop to taking taxis instead of limos (key word: almost) and even started shopping at Whole Foods instead of Dean and Deluca. Not gonna lie, that was a tough, cognacless three days.

So you'll have to pardon the lack of film-reviews–I was almost on the streets for a while there. Thank god for the commie-in-chief and his "bailout package." They should've called it the "increase-McDougal's-stock-options-package." I was practically force-fed cash by the feds, to the point that I'm sitting pretty again, working a couple hours a week, and even had enough stimulus cash to buy a yacht of my own (I needed somewhere to bang interns that was less conspicuous than the office or the wife's bed). I take back everything I ever said about that terrorist bastard president–he truly is one of Us.

Anyway, I popped this DVD into my HDTV flat-screen in the bar of my yacht while I was doing blow and getting a beej from a 22-year-old Columbia student intern, so my memory of the film's just slightly hazy. But from what I saw between Grey Goose martinis (BUD: 50.55 buy!) and unprotected sex, this latest in the Harry Potter franchise couldn't've been more relevant to our times. What better film to renew our hope in the capitalist system?

Is that a WSJ they're reading?

I know what you're thinking here. You're thinking, "Mike, what the fuck does Harry Potter have to do with capitalism?" But bear with me a second.

Now I don't know if the movie was all that different from the book (I don't read so-called "literature," outside of the good book--that is, the Journal!) but this film was absolutely a parable about capitalism. Think about it. What is it that the little wiz-kids are fighting against? All those earth-toned, turtlenecked Slytherins and dark wizards and hobbits and whatevers don't represent just a fairytale. They represent socialism.

Consider Harry Potter's life story. Poor kid, grew up in a broom closet, inherits a vast fortune from dead parents, now he's a famous for being famous a lá Paris Hilton. See what I'm saying? He's a trust-funder!–an inheritance baby, like me and my kids and most of Wall Street. Harry Potter is the epitome of the American dream, and proof that you can be rich by doing no work whatsoever. Hell, that's what American capitalism is all about.

But Harry's a swell little motherfucker, and he definitely deserves all those sacks of galleons he's squirreling away. (I guess they don't have estate taxes in the wizard world, or else really good interest rates in the Goblin banks). And so far, he's turned out to be a pretty good investor. That broomstick he bought (FBOLT: 12.3 Buy! Great product placement), the military-prototype invisible shield bullshit, his security detail and his grades and girlfriend and drugs (I'm just assuming) seem to be working out pretty well for him.

Voldemort, on the other hand, is a poverty case-in-point. He's got tons of followers but no investment strategy. If he's so "powerful," why does he seem to be squirreled away in old squats, rather than raising money from his legions? Doesn't he have a business plan? If I had enough investors who'd drunk my Kool-Aid (KOOL: 23.03 Sit on this one), you can bet I'd run my empire out of Bermuda, that's for sure, not some dingy dark recess.

You know who else wears all black? Socialist Beatnik freaks. Prof. Snape pictured, with former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

The only real reason I can think of that Voldemort wouldn't take advantage of his power to raise capital is that he's running some kind of grassroots organization. The movie hints at this, but it's clear that Voldemort doesn't want money, just people to believe in his cause. Yeah, you heard me–he's essentially a community organizer. And everyone knows they never win.

If you haven't apparated yourself out of this mental recession yet, I highly recommend Harry Potter. Nothing beats watching a scrappy young trust-funder weasel his way out of various crimes just by using the power of his name. What can I say, I can relate–I do it every fucking day.
-MMD, MBA

Rating: $$$$$ (4 USD/5 USD)
Buy: Grey Goose (BUD) Firebolt LLC (FBOLT)
Hold: Kool-aid (KOOL)

PS: Since writing this article, I uncovered some more literary evidence that Voldemort's character is a metaphor for Marxism. According to the Wikipedia article I had my underlings summarize for me, Voldemort's apparently also a "half-blood." Half-wizard, half-human. Probably that kind of biracial upbringing contributed to his fucked-up views. Remind you of any other socialist starlets?