Plunder

Synopsis

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.

Release Date:2010

Duration:59 min

ISBN:1-932869-41-7

Subtitles:English

Trailers

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Filmmaker Credits

Directed, Written & Produced by

Danny Schechter

Produced & Edited by

Ray Nowosielski

Executive Producers

Rory O'Connor

Executive Producers

Anant Singh

Co-Editor

Alejandro Heiber

Contributing Writer

Ray Nowosielski

Production Manager

Herb Brooks

Associate Producers

Ryan Bennett

Associate Producers

Sean Inouye

Assistant Producers

Aysel Endres

Assistant Producers

Marie-Emilie Dozin

Composer

Polarity/1

Audio Mixer

Rubio

Computer Animations

Erik Potter

Computer Animations

Jessica Hyndman

A Globalvision Production

Filmmaker Biographies

Danny Schechter

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.

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Praise

"For the most art, the media has done a lousy job of explaining the recent U.S. economic collapse. How many of us even know what "derivatives" are -- or the crucial role they played in Wall Street's casino-style looting of the economy. That's why this new movie by Danny Schechter, a journalist and documentarian (In Debt We Trust) who specializes in economic issues, is so welcome and valuable. If they [speculators who made giant profits from the fall] are punished, and the much-needed economic regulatory reforms are adopted ..., honest journalists like Schechter will be one of the main reasons. See this."

Isthmus The Daily Page

"A few years back, filmmaker Danny Schechter predicted the financial crisis in the United States before it actually happened. No one's laughing now. Perhaps, this is as good a reason as any to check out this new work from Schechter. Plunder: The Crime of Our Time explores how the present-day crisis was built on a base of criminal activity. The journalistic filmmaker explores various shady enterprises and gives the viewer a clear-cut picture of how their actions lead to today's tragic situation."

Pittsburgh Tribune Review

"Schechter's new film, Plunder: The Crime of Our Time describes how Wall Street interests greased the skids for just such a collapse, consciously breaking laws they knew government regulators were unlikely to defend. Michael Moore has trod similar ground, but in a more overtly entertaining style. Schechter uses more traditional investigative procedures, by collecting evidence and interviewing perpetrators of financial crimes, journalists and government officials. It's a sobering documentary, but one that's too important to ignore."

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