In Debt We Trust - America before the bubble bursts 1/5
In Debt We Trust - America before the bubble bursts 5/5
Por: http://www.dailymotion.com/peamak
IN DEBT WE TRUST shows how the mall replaced the factory as America's dominant economic engine and how big banks and credit card companies buy our Congress and drive us into what a former major bank economist calls modern serfdom. Americans and our government owe trillions in consumer debt and the national debt, a large amount of it to big banks and billions to Communist China.
EXPERTS AGREE: A top government official compares the US today to Rome before its fall and warns that the bubble could burst. A former prosecutor says that many of these loans are worst than mafia loan-sharking practices. An ex-credit card executive explains how advertising campaigns are deliberately deceptive and misleading.
ROBIN HOOD OR ROBBING THE HOOD: A real estate expert reports that tens of billions of dollars, are being transferred from the pockets of the poor into the vaults of big banks which use front groups and subsidiaries to camouflage their association with rip-off loans charging exorbitant interest rates.
SCAMMING SOLDIERS: We visit a military base to learn that soldiers just back from Iraq are being victimized en masse by payday lenders.
CONGRESS: BOUGHT AND SOLD: In Washington we learn how big money and lobbying stops government and political leaders from regulating usurious interest rates or stopping the gentrification of poor neighborhoods in which thousands of families are losing their homes through predatory mortgage, home-improvement and foreclosure scams.
COLLEGE CREDIT: We visit a campus where college students are being forced to pay higher interest rates for loans while a majority graduate with more than $20,000 in loans. Credit Card Nation author Robert Manning explains the crisis.
BANKRUPTCY BILL BLUES: And then we hear about the shame and pain of bankruptcy as the Congress passes a bill to make it harder for Americans to get a second chance and disqualifies Hurricane Katrina victims from filing for relief.
A CALL TO ACTION: Economics is called "the dismal science," yet this film is anything but; it exposes practices we can all relate to because they effect us all, adds Schechter. The film also talks about how we can fight back.
Deeper than the news, fast-paced, musically charged and deeply informative, IN DEBT WE TRUST is call to action: film-making with an angry edge and a broad well-reported scope.
Director Danny Schechter's Personal Statement
IN DEBT WE TRUST started out to be a film about what I thought were other people's problems. I came to realize how deeply they affect me as well. The experience of making this film has led me to understand how many ways policies and practices are tied to a growing national debt burden and have an impact on my personal finances.
Even as a former network journalist and long-time investigative reporter, I was shocked and outraged when I started probing the roots of these issues.
This is a problem involving millions of people and billions of dollars yet it is downplayed and rarely discussed in all of its disastrous dimensions. It's about a growing inequality that some experts fear will lead to a new 21st century serfdom. It's about the transfer of wealth from working people into the vaults and accounts of a relatively small number of financial institutions and real estate interests. The lenders are profiting by charging usurious rates and doing so legally, in part, because they have mastered the art and science of marketing products and then manipulating media, politicians, and political institutions.
Most. often, credit card abuses are examined in terms of individuals and consumer scams like identity theft. My film started with that approach but evolved into a much deeper look at what's been called "financialization." This is an institutional problem involving a growing debt-and- credit complex that threatens the very fabric of our nation, not just in terms of a possible financial crash in the future but how it is impinging upon our lives and livelihoods right now.
Over the course of my career, I have made 20 films and won many awards and some recognition. Most have been shown at top festivals and aired on television. I am attached to all of them but INDEBT WE TRUST is different because it doesn't just document suffering, it warns of the implications of consequences that will affect all of us. Perhaps that's why this issue cuts across party and partisan lines in a way that can potentially unite a nation. Perhaps that's why mostly everyone I've told about the film tells me how they've come to be personally ensnared in the debt trap.
My hope is that this film will spark a national response-a demand for economic fairness and justice, regulation in the public interest, along with a heightened sense of personal responsibility by consumers seduced by the false promise of "free money."
What's been called the "democratization of credit" has led to the democratization of dependency. It has created an unsustainable society, trapping millions in a financial hole they can't escape from and often do not understand.
Over the past 25 years, America has moved from a society based on production to a nation driven by consumption; from a country that once shared its resources with the world to one deeply in debt to foreign banks and countries-to the tune of trillions of dollars. As the growing number of bankruptcies and foreclosures testifies, our national debt is mirrored by a skyrocketing consumer debt, with an increasing number of individuals and families unable to cope.
Says former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, "It is shocking to me that intelligent people, educated people, have not taken time to think about this. We cannot sustain over an extended period of time these high levels of debt. . . particularly at high rates of interest. Because . . . what will happen is that whenever it comes to an end . . . and there is an end to the amount of credit . . . in other words, when it gets so leveraged, it will create an economic crisis so deep that it will threaten us as a nation . . . And so we have this . . . this real threat to the way we are as a people. And nobody seems to be concerned about it."
IN DEBT WE TRUST is concerned about it. My focus is on what to do "before the bubble bursts." First, we need to put this issue on the national agenda. That's the hope behind the film.
Working with the country's leading credit card expert and critic, Dr. Robert Manning, of Rochester Institute of Technology, I intend to use the film as part of an educational campaign to help individuals improve their financial planning and encourage organizations to get involved in a campaign for change.
Over the years, documentaries have helped prompt a national discourse on many issues. That's my hope for IN DEBT WE TRUST, which we have tried to make compelling viewing in a spirited style. Many at the TV news networks whom I have worked with over the years say you can't cover complex issues, especially on economic questions, because "the dismal science" is boring and a turn-off.
My film is out to prove them wrong.
The American public needs to know why debt has become "the enemy," in the words of one of the people we interviewed. All Americans need to know what we can do about it."
