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Exposing the forces responsible for the loss of trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, massive foreclosures and the disappearance of retirement funds,
Plunder: The Crime of Our Time investigates the unregulated fraud and theft that led to the market's collapse in fall 2008. Filmmaker Danny Schechter, Emmy Award-winning former ABC News and CNN producer, explores the epidemic of subprime mortgages, predatory lending, insurance scams, and high-risk hedge funds that caused the collapse of the housing market and a full-scale economic meltdown. Schechter speaks to a range of analysts and insiders about the origins of the crisis: bankers, respected economists, insider experts, convicted white-collar criminal Sam Antar, and top journalists, including
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. In engaging and enraging detail, the film moves from the mysterious collapse of Bear Stearns, an 85-year-old investment film that disappeared in a week, to the shadowy world of trillion-dollar hedge funds, delving into the complicity of major media outlets that failed to sound the alarm or investigate what was going on. In the end,
Plunder lays bare the truth behind events that have affected billions of people. A must for economics, business, and sociology courses, as well as anyone who wants to understand the current financial situation.
Duration: 59 min
ISBN: 1-932869-41-7
Date Produced: 2010
Subtitles: English
Discussion Guide
TranscriptFilmmaker InfoDirected, Written & Produced by Danny Schechter
Produced & Edited by Ray Nowosielski
Executive Producers: Rory O'Connor & Anant Singh
Co-Editor: Alejandro Heiber
Contributing Writer: Ray Nowosielski
Production Manager: Herb Brooks
Associate Producers: Ryan Bennett & Sean Inouye
Assistant Producers: Aysel Endres & Marie-Emilie Dozin
Composer: Polarity/1
Audio Mixer: Rubio
Computer Animations by Erik Potter & Jessica Hyndman
A Globalvision Production
Filmmaker's Bio
Danny Schecter | Writer, Producer, & Director
Danny Schechter (1942-2015) was a television producer and independent
filmmaker who also wrote and spoke about media issues. He is the author
of
Falun Gong's Challenge to China,
The More You Watch, The Less You Know, and
News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics.
From 1999 to 2010, Shecter was the executive editor and
"blogger-in-chief" at the now defunct MediaChannel.org, a popular online
media issues network.
Schechter was also the co-founder and executive producer of
Globalvision, a New York-based television and film production company,
where he produced 156 editions of the award-winning series
South Africa Now, and co-produced
Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television with Charlayne Hunter-Gault. His human rights production,
Globalization and Human Rights was co-produced with Rory O'Connor and shown nationally on PBS.
Schechter received his Master's degree from the London School of
Economics and an honorary doctorate from Fitchburg College. He was a
Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard, where he also taught in 1969.
After college, he was a full time civil rights worker and then
communications director of the Northern Student Movement, worked as a
community organizer in a Saul Alinsky-style War on Poverty program, and,
moving from the streets to the suites, served as an assistant to the
Mayor of Detroit in 1966 on a Ford Foundation grant. Schechter was a
producer for CNN and a producer for ABC's 20/20, where during his eight
years he won two National News Emmys.
Schechter was an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism
at Columbia University. His writing has appeared in leading newspapers
and magazines including the
The Nation,
Newsday,
Boston Globe,
Columbia Journalism Review,
Media Studies Journal,
Detroit Free Press,
Village Voice,
Tikkun,
Z Magazine, and many others.
Related Links
More information and resources available at
www.plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.
