Why make I.O.U.S.A.? You don’t make a movie about finance to pick up chicks.

We made the movie because we had read a book, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis, by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin, [and] we really liked it. The same friend [who] told us we were crazy to make Wordplay, a documentary about crossword puzzles, thought we were even crazier when we told him about I.O.U.S.A.

In your film, George W. Bush confesses he got a “B” in Economics. What did you get?

But Bush adds he got “an ‘A’ in keeping taxes low and being fis-cal-ly responsible.” In the film, he sort of mangles the word, and it’s a cringe-worthy moment.

I dropped out of business school. I was going to be a business major but I didn’t like it. So, this is not something I am an expert in, but that makes me a very good person to make this film. I can relate to an audience who doesn’t know this stuff, much better than an economist. If you ever want to have a miserable night, go out with five economists to a bar. You’ll get ten different opinions. Economics is a dismal science.

This is a political film, but it’s non-partisan, right?

We didn’t want to talk about whether the Iraq war was the right thing to do or not. We didn’t want to talk about Medicare D and whether we should have signed that into law. What was primary was, let’s open the checkbook of the United States and see what kind of shape we’re in, and put politics aside. The numbers don’t lie. This is a boring topic for about five seconds. And after that, before you know it, the gloves are off and people want to kill each other because you’re talking about tax policy, entitlement programs… it’s a very emotional topic.

Warren Etheredge is the founder and host of The Warren Report. Download the complete podcast of this interview for free at thewarrenreport.com.