Send this article to a friend: February 05 2014

Like many concerned about the growing credit bubble driving the housing boom, Jim Bruce did his best to warn family and friends about the looming risks leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Not many heeded him.

Jim, though, had not only positioned his portfolio defensively for such an event, he also managed to make profits by betting against the stocks of overly leveraged financial institutions. But it's what he did with the money he made that's the interesting story here.

Jim's worry about the unsustainability of our nation's economic trajectory only increased once the Federal Reserve began undertaking its extreme measures to get liquidity flowing (QE I, II, III, etc). In his eyes, easy credit and misguided market intervention were huge causes of the crisis in the first place, and here we were, trying to solve the problem by simply doing a LOT more of what created it.

So Jim set out again to educate people about the dangers of continuing down the reckless path we're currently on, and he chose to focus his beam on the Federal Reserve — arguably the most influential institution in the world right now, and at the center of the policies and programs that, in his estimation, are currently dooming our economic and monetary futures. So last year, he released the film documentary Money For Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve, which he wrote, directed, and produced.

Since its release, Jim has been touring the country with the film, speaking to Main Street and college audiences about the Fed: the implications of its policies, its fallibility, and our responsibility as citizens to remain educated on and vigilant of this private institution that has been granted tremendous power over our lives. Jim's goals are to build awareness that the money wizards are not all-knowing and to create a dialog to actively question policy decisions that he sees as detrimental to our nation's interests in the long term.