Dr. Friedman states, "There is not a single person in the world who can make this pencil." He explains that the creation of even a simple object - like the "lead" pencil - requires the knowledge of many people, lumberjacks, steel manufacturers, miners, etc. These people may not speak the same language, they may not know or like one another, yet the market enables them to combine knowledge and effort to produce wealth.

To those who watch television in the developed world, there doesn’t seem to be a better system on earth than the capitalist system. We are experiencing the longest economic expansion in modern history. Soviet Communism has been defeated. But make no mistake, as we will demonstrate in this program, capitalism is surprisingly vulnerable. The moment of capitalism’s greatest triumph is the moment of its greatest crisis, its “Moment of Truth”....