Michael Moore Blasts Wall Street Bailout, Wants “Money Back”

Bloomberg has reported that Michael MooreMichael Moore launched his film Capitalism: A Love Story at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, staging an all-out attack on the free-market system and on the U.S. government bailout of financial institutions.

"Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil," Moore, an American director and satirist, says in his two-hour documentary, one of 24 movies competing for the top Venice prize. "You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that's good for all people, and that something is called democracy."

The film deals with a wide range of issues -- from home foreclosures to the bankruptcy of General Motors -- and has a lengthy section on the past year's worldwide financial meltdown, beginning with the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. and the bailout of companies including American International Group, Inc.

Lehman's collapse and U.S. taxpayers' $700 billion rescue of the financial system are providing material for movie and television dramatizations. The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, a BBC Two drama, airs on September 9 in the U.K.

In Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore and his crew are seen entering the AIG building to "make a citizens' arrest" of the board of directors. They're escorted out by security. Moore also approaches bank buildings, saying that he wants to get "money back" for the American people.

Elsewhere, Moore indicates that the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. swayed the administration of President George W. BushPresident George W. Bush because Treasury Secretary Henry PaulsonHenry Paulson was formerly Goldman's chief executive officer.

Representative Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat from Ohio's 9th District, says in the Moore film that "all the people in charge" at the U.S. Treasury throughout the George W. Bush administration were from Goldman Sachs.

Contacted via e-mail prior to the film’s Venice screening, Lucas van Praag, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs, didn't immediately respond to the message, which inquired about his reaction to the references to Goldman in the trailer.

Moore spoke at a Venice news conference hours prior to the screening of his film. "There's culpability amongst all groups," he said, "whether it's the U.S., corporations, government, and the American people buying into a rigged system."

"I hope that people will start to wake up a bit and see that they are participating in something that's causing them a lot of harm," added Moore, wearing a buttoned red polo shirt.

Moore's film is on limited release in the U.S. on September 23. It opens in movie theaters throughout the U.S. on October 2.

"By spending just a few million dollars to buy Congress, Wall Street was given billions," Moore says in the film’s trailer.