http://www.opednews.com/articles/Plunder-The-Crime-of-Our-by-Marta-Steele-100803-260.html3 August 2010: Plunder: The Crime of Our Time
("Never before have so few done so much to so many")
As an economically challenged but concerned activist, I have learned most of what I understand about today's economic morass from my good friend Danny Schechter, producer and director of the films In Debt We Trust and Plunder: The Crime of Our Time.
In Debt We Trust
predicted the financial recession plaguing not only our economy but the entire world. Plunder dissects the disaster that realized IDWT's predictions, step by step, communicating well with the average viewer.
The film begins and ends with protests by enraged foreclosure victims, members of the middle class whom the film describes as financially desiccated by the upper class in this country. Basically, they were manipulated into signing adjustable-rate mortgage agreements that they could not afford, seduced by the American dream of the possibility of occupying a home more luxurious that their realities. The interests associated with such mortgages could start out at one percent and quickly skyrocket to 7 and then 9 percent interest rates, devouring the victims' entire monthly wages and then some, plunging them into bankruptcy as well as foreclosure or ruining their pursuit of happiness by the threat of both disasters from this "financial Katrina."
But before that happened, such subprime loans would be bundled by the banks and sold to investors, who would package them with other instruments and resell them to higher-level financeers. These moguls would flood giants like AIG with insurance premiums.
More at the link ---