Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve (2013)

Director: Jim Bruce
Run Time: 104 min.
Call Number: HG2563 .M665 2013

"The documentary is especially compelling when it explains how the easy-money policies embraced by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sowed the seeds for the financial collapse of 2008. In his early years as Fed chairman, Greenspan was admired as a monetary superhero who had engineered remarkable gains in the stock market through artificially low interest rates . . . Greenspan was brought before Congress after the dot com bubble burst.  Instead of renouncing the easy money policies that had injured the economy, Greenspan displays apathy towards the stock market crash by essentially saying our economy had a great run, the bust was not terrible, so that wasn’t so bad … was it? Greenspan then blew a new bubble with housing prices. Its collapse (in the fall of 2008) was far more devastating . . . Perhaps the most compelling feature of this documentary is the exceptional coverage of the actions which led to the financial collapse in 2008."

—Jon Decker, Forbes

Stories We Tell (2013)

Director: Sarah Polley
Run Time: 108 min.
Call Number: HQ503 .S76 2013

"Who owns a family’s stories? Do we shape our lore—the anecdotes of how our parents met, the tales of sibling betrayals and truces—as a clan, or do we agree on the outlines while parting ways on the particulars? Is it possible to be anything but subjective when it comes to the legends in our own homes? This is the endlessly complicated subject of Sarah Polley’s 'Stories We Tell,' a documentary inquiry into her past that ingeniously widens in scope until director and audience stand at the edge of the abyss."
—Ty Burr, Boston Globe