"Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time”–Danny Schechter Takes on Wall St. in New Film

[Jefferson23]

This morning, April 28, on Democracy Now.


We speak with investigative journalist, filmmaker, and author Danny Schechter, ‘the News Dissector.’ His latest film features interviews with industry insiders to reveal how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity. It’s called “Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time.”


Guest:

Danny Schechter, investigative journalist, filmmaker and author. His latest film is “Plunder: The Crime of our Time.” He runs the News Dissector blog



AMY GOODMAN: We are going to continue on the economy with a new film out that’s called “Plunder.” Rob Johnson I want to thank you very much for being with us. He’s a former economist at the Senate Banking Committee, director now of the Economic Policy Initiative at the Roosevelt Institute. And thanks very much to Greg Gordon who is with us in Washington, investigative journalist with McClatchy newspapers, as we turn now to this new film.


We are joined in New York by investigative journalist, filmmaker, and author Danny Schechter, the News Dissector. His latest film features interviews with industry insiders to reveal how the financial crisis was built on a foundation of criminal activity. It’s called ”Plunder: The Crime of Our Time.“ The film follows-up on his book, “Plunder,” that predicted the coming crisis and an earlier film ”In Debt We Trust" that explored America’s rising credit burden at the time. This is a clip from “Plunder.”


DANNY SCHECHTER: To help with our investigation, we spoke with convicted white-collar criminal Sam Antar.


SAM ANTAR: The white collar criminal has no legal constraints. You subpoena documents, we destroy documents. You subpoena witnesses, we lie. So you are at a disadvantage when it comes to the white-collar criminal. In effect, we’re economic predators.


DANNY SCHECHTER: To an investigative reporter on the business beat, “Wall Street steals far more than the Mafia,” says Gary Weiss.


GARY WEISS: Wall Street takes large, much larger sums of money than was involved in the Mafia scams. The regulatory system is such that they can get away with it.


DANNY SCHECHTER: The lack of media scrutiny, the absence of regulation, the widespread illusion that markets and real-estate could only go up, created a casino mentality and, an environment for successful fraudsters and white-collar criminals. Moe Sasserby was a VP at Standard and Poor’s.


MOE SASSERBY: There certainly is criminality. We know about it. We know all of the people who, in fact, did something rather simple, which is put their hand and someone else’s pocket and took money that didn’t belong to them.

remainder in full: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/28/plunder_the_crime_of_our_time

[Jefferson23]

1. A kick for the very good work by Danny Schechter. n/t