Order this film along with The Overspent American - Why We Want What We Don't Need - DVD, and you'll receive a free copy of the DVD "The Story of Stuff"
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.
EXPERTS AGREE: A top
government official compares the US today to Rome before its fall and
warns that the bubble could burst. A former prosecutor says that many of
these loans are worst than mafia loan-sharking practices. An ex-credit
card executive explains how advertising campaigns are deliberately
deceptive and misleading.
ROBIN HOOD OR ROBBING THE HOOD:
A real estate expert reports that tens of billions of dollars,
are being transferred from the pockets of the poor into the vaults of big
banks which use front groups and subsidiaries to camouflage their
association with rip-off loans charging exorbitant interest rates.
SCAMMING SOLDIERS: We visit a
military base to learn that soldiers just back from Iraq are being
victimized en masse by payday lenders.
CONGRESS: BOUGHT AND SOLD: In Washington we learn how
big money and lobbying stops government and political leaders from
regulating usurious interest rates or stopping the gentrification of poor
neighborhoods in which thousands of families are losing their homes
through predatory mortgage, home-improvement and foreclosure scams.
COLLEGE CREDIT: We visit a
campus where college students are being forced to pay higher interest
rates for loans while a majority graduate with more than $20,000 in loans.
Credit Card Nation author Robert Manning explains the crisis.
BANKRUPTCY BILL BLUES: And
then we hear about the shame and pain of bankruptcy as the Congress passes
a bill to make it harder for Americans to get a second chance and
disqualifies Hurricane Katrina victims from filing for relief.
A CALL TO ACTION: Economics is
called "the dismal science," yet this film is anything but; it exposes
practices we can all relate to because they effect us all, adds Schechter.
The film also talks about how we can fight back.
Deeper than the news, fast-paced, musically
charged and deeply informative, IN DEBT WE TRUST is call
to action: film-making with an angry edge and a broad well-reported scope.
Watch the trailer below: