Michael Moore’s few and fleeting moments of wit and insightful journalism are only devices for the documentarian to manipulate and communicate inaccuracies. This is true especially in Capitalism: A Love Story, which is largely a platform for Moore’s self-righteousness.

I have a bias against Moore. I disagree with his politics and more so with his tactics, but I do enjoy his movies, sometimes. Bowling for Columbine was compelling, if rambling, and Canadian Bacon has some of the best Canada jokes. Moore even sprinkles bits of wit and insight into Capitalism.

He gets some things right about U.S. economic history in Capitalism. He explains U.S. prosperity post-World War II came about because the country was the lone industrial power amid war-ravaged countries. The war reduced Europe’s industrial capacity — the previous world leader — to less than rubble. The same was true for Japan and as a result, the United States supplied 60 percent of the world’s goods.

But Moore’s facts and reasoning become sketchy and contradictory after that. He paints current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as a consistent failure and tool of the banking industry at the beginning of the movie, then heralds Obama as an agent for change. Moore neglects to connect Geithner to Obama at any time, even though Obama nominated him.

Capitalism is full of these fallacies, but perhaps the biggest is his thesis. Moore blames the recession on financial deregulation.

Before I explain how Moore is wrong on deregulation, let me list the major events in the financial collapse. The financial crisis wreaked havoc worldwide with the collapse of the commercial paper market. Commercial paper is the name finance experts give to the short-term debt governments and businesses use to finance day-to-day operations. They can’t function without it.

The commercial paper market failed because financial companies involved in commercial paper production and trade, such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, collapsed. These companies collapsed because they used mortgage and property-value derivatives to finance commercial paper, and those derivatives collapsed. They collapsed because the housing market collapsed in late 2006.

Moore, using such experts as actor Wallace Shawn and economics Professor William Black, says removing regulation, specifically the regulation separating lending and investment banks, caused the collapse. It’s a tempting theory — if lending banks and investment banks couldn’t merge, then they wouldn’t have turned mortgages into investment products and allowed a housing crisis to turn into a global catastrophe.

The theory doesn’t fit the circumstances leading to the collapse. If allowing investment and lending banks to merge caused the collapse, then the companies that benefited most would have collapsed, namely Citigroup and Wells Fargo, which had both investment and lending arms. Investment-only companies such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were the ones to collapse instead.

Countrywide, the biggest housing lender in the country, collapsed because of its exposure to subprime lending. Deregulation may have saved U.S. investment banking, as the only ones to survive were ones that also lent.

Moore is a poor documentarian. Rather than make a compelling case based on objective facts, he shows himself as the hero. The people agreeing with Moore will defend the movie because he tells them what they want to hear. People against Moore will point out his numerous fallacies. The movie contributes nothing new to the debate.