Danny Schechter directed an extremely informative documentary, "In Debt We Trust," on how the financial industry lured Americans into a debt crisis, by offering loans as if they were cotton candy, without clearly revealing the hidden usorious rates.

Most Americans have a difficult time understanding the complex underpinnings of the current financial crisis, but Schechter cuts to the chase in his title: we were plundered by greedy and ravenous Wall Street sharks, the reptilian products of GOP de-regulation carried to an insatiable economic implosion.

"Plunder" reminds us that this was about vultures descending on our society without any significant regulatory restraints. And the results have been disastrous. What they did was criminal. People get life sentences for bouncing three checks, but Wall Street CEOs get millions, sometimes billions of dollars in pocket change for their acts of piracy.

Stephen Lendman writes:

Schechter's book is timely, important, and frightening. He does a masterful job deconstructing a complicated subject. One covered up in the mainstream. Its dark side papered over suppressed.

Schechter explains it fully and clearly for lay readers to understand. It's essential they do it because it touches everyone. No one knows how bad it may get, but the current crisis has legs. The worst of it may be ahead, and before it ends millions may feel it painfully. "Plunder" provides ammunition. A blueprint of what's unfolding. Explaining that government help won't be forthcoming, so we're responsible for making the best of a very bad situation.

It begins with understanding the scandalous dilemma unfolding. The complicity of government and Wall Street behind it. The dominant media promoting it. What author Kevin Phillips calls the "rise of big finance" and "global crisis of American capitalism;" "Frankenstein finance;" and a problem so potentially grave that "there may no longer be a plausible way out."

Schechter calls it "financialization" to describe "the kind of control (a Credit and Loan Complex) exert(s) over society every bit as insidious as the Military-Industrial Complex." Made up of Wall Street; big banks; an array of finance, credit card and related companies preying on middle-America and the poor and transferring enormous wealth to the rich. A regulatory environment allowing it. Creating an open field for fraud. Taking full advantage because so-called "watchdogs" are part of the problem. The administration and Federal Reserve as well. The entire power structure allied against working people. A shameful and potentially disastrous situation as a result.

(read more in the extended review)