Plunder: The Crime of our Time

Film evenings begin with optional potluck refreshments and social hour at 6:30 pm,
followed by the film at 7:30 pm, followed by a discussion after the film.

PLUNDER: The Crime of our Time
by Danny Schechter

The financial crisis of 2008 was built on a foundation of criminal activity that stripped bare the connection between the collapse of the housing market and the economic catastrophe that followed. This eye-opening film begins with the conviction of ponzi king Bernie Madoff whose acknowledged criminality drove a $65 billion dollar pyramid scheme. The film argues that the wrong doing committed by a few individuals such as Bernie Madoff distracts from the real story which implicates the best-known financial institutions, world wide, that financed and profited from fraudulent sub-prime lending, a fraud epidemic. It shows how these top financial firms created special securities to repackage and resell these dubious loans after they were fraudulently re-rated as Triple A. The firms then bet against many of these toxic assets with credit default swaps and other insurance scams. The financial crisis developed from the mysterious collapse of Bear Stearns, an 85-year-old investment firm that disappeared in a week, to the shadowy world of trillion-dollar hedge funds. By leveraging these investments, they recklessly put trillions of dollars and the world economy at risk.

This film connects the dots identifying who the victims and who the beneficiaries are in what “may well turn out to be the greatest nonviolent crime against humanity in history.” The financial processes of these top financial firms were enacted away from the public eye — because the media were complicit in this whole fraudulent affair. A top financial journalist and media analyst as well as a financier explain how the business media became embedded in the culture it was covering, similar to embedded reporters in Iraq. And the film travels to Paris to examine how this financial crisis has gone global. This film has the facts and the details about fraudulent practices that have affected billions of people and sent trillions of dollars gone missing. The resulting financial crisis is not about the unintentional mistakes of a greedy few but a crime that effects us all. The film is a call to action.

Wheelchair accessible around the corner at 411 28th Street

$5 donations are accepted