BuzzFlash Reviews

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We've gotten to know Danny "the Media Dissector" Schechter since we started BuzzFlash and gotten to respect his passion and his work. Danny is a bit of a gadfly, a graduate of the civil rights movement -- and long-time media critic -- who definitely has an impassioned point of view.

Danny has put together a fascinating and absorbing documentary on the most seemingly boring of all subjects: debt.

It's not a high-budget film, but it is more powerful than many documentaries with 50 times the budget that we suspect Schechter had.

Schechter is the on-camera narrator of this accessible and insightful walk through the valley of American debt. By the end, you'll be mad as Hell and won't be able to take it anymore. But, you'll probably blow off steam by going out and having a good dinner, which you will charge with a credit card.

And that's the irony of "In Debt We Trust," because the engine of debt in American society for many Americans is the ravenous and rapacious credit card industry, which has enjoyed unbridled support from both sides of the political aisle.

Credit cards go hand and hand with pumping a consumer society gone out of control. We are encouraged to buy our fantasies and pay on credit, even if we cannot afford the consumer product of the moment that we don't really need, but that advertising convinces us that we can't live without.

Credit card companies can only make their billions in profit if we go into debt. It's a very simple concept, but they, as Schechter shows us, are masters at getting us to spend, spend, spend!

As a result, we are a nation in hock, literally. Not only are most of us personally deep in the red, but America is kept afloat by loans from overseas, including China and the oil-rich nations in the Middle East.

Somehow, Schechter makes all of this a gripping story that outrages as much as it makes us realize how much we have all fallen prey to the lure of the credit card driven debtors society.

And the fact that both Republican and Democratic Party leaders generally do the bidding of the credit card companies -- as they did in the recent travesty of a bankruptcy bill that shafts consumers and enriches the financial industry -- comes through loud and clear in Schechter's documentary.

One of the many interesting segments in "In Debt We Trust" is how the credit card companies start enticing college students to run up debt with endless solicitations to apply for credit cards. As with drugs, they want to get you hooked early.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS