This is my Christmas present to everyone who has ever been overcome by stress during the holiday season and also to all the progressives who works so hard at making Rhode Island a better place. George Bailey got the holiday blues too, and he even doubted his own tremendously beneficial influence on Bedford Falls.
Happy holidays and I hope you enjoy the movie … it’s my all-time favorite.
George Bailey’s famous speech about community:
Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about… they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well in my book, my father died a much richer man than you’ll ever be!
And his even more famous speech on the economy:
You’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house…right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?
Merry Christmas to you Bob and everyone here on Rhode Island Future.
George Bailey jumped into the icy water beneath the bridge, I think. Old man Potter’s bank’s liabilities were found to be greater than its assets and was seized by federal regulators in the early nineties leaving taxpayers on the hook for a large portion of the debt. It was taken over by the Resolution Trust Corporation and absorbed by a huge off-shore banking operation now owned by the government of the U K which had to bail it out after the most recent banking meltdown.
Old Man Potter has retired very comfortably and is presently living in Florida. His money now resides in off-shore accounts not far from his home in the Sunshine State.