In America’s earliest days, there were barn-raising parties in which neighbors helped each other build up their farms. Today, in some churches, there are debt liquidation revivals in which parishioners chip in to free each other from growing credit card debts that are driving American families to bankruptcy and desperation. IN DEBT WE TRUST is the latest film from Danny Schechter, “The News Dissector,” director of the internationally distributed and award-winning WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception), an expose of the media’s role in the Iraq War. The Emmy-winning former ABC News and CNN producer’s new hard-hitting documentary investigates why so many Americans are being strangled by debt. It is a journalistic confrontation with what former Reagan advisor Kevin Phillips calls “Financialization”–the “powerful emergence of a debt-and-credit industrial complex.” While many Americans may be “maxing out” on credit cards, there is a deeper story: power is shifting into fewer hands…..with frightening consequences. 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.
Ah, credit card debt… How many Americans can relate to this? Danny Schechter wrote, produced and directed this film. This is a great film about more “down to earth” topics like personal debt.
With so many large speculative investment banking firms like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch going under as well as the insurance firm AIG things are certainly going to change. Not only will you be paying off your own debt, but the government (you) will be paying off gigantic sums of corporate debt as well. Well, the CEO’s and upper management got out with all their options before all of this happened, so don’t worry (sarcasm intended).
Many more banks will be collapsing soon. All those high interest rate loans on houses (given something like 60% to minorities) will be agressively collected. Forclosures will increase in the housing market. Housing values will drop. Property taxes will be decreased. Funds for local and state government programs will drop as a result. So in addition to paying your debt, you’ll see your local schools, roads and local infrastructure deteriorate. And the sad part is that the government (you) is bailing out these companies, inheriting the risks associated, without even understanding what those risks are. Don’t you think these companies knew what was coming? Is there really any question?
