With Plunder, activist-director Danny Schechter employs heavy Michael Moore irony in an investigation of how the American economic system was corrupted from the inside. Plunder (out now on DVD) surveys much the same ground as Moore’s latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, but it’s the ground we live on. A dose of carefully directed militancy is needed in the face of the toxic misinformation surrounding the economic collapse of 2008.
In essence, Schechter’s thesis is that the American economy has entirely slipped its mooring as a producer of tangible goods and services and sailed into the treacherous waters of uninhibited speculation. In the ‘00s, the investment kingpins treated the economy of the whole world as a casino blackjack table and the bets they made were ruinous—except for themselves. In most cases, the parasites continue to feed off the work and dreams of the rest of us, a tiny minority living at everyone else’s expense.
Wall Street, in Schechter’s analysis, became nothing but a giant Ponzi scheme during the same years that Bernie Madoff made his millions. He makes the provocative comment that Madoff was singled out for punishment because he primarily victimized the rich. This is unfair, but his larger point is valid: many reckless speculators not only escaped justice but profited from the ruin they caused. The federal government was the enabler, loosening regulations to the point where virtually anything was acceptable. The public paid no attention, gulled by the argot of derivatives and the complexity of the schemes they disguised. The media was complicit, polishing Wall Street to an unwarranted luster.
Will meaningful structural changes be implemented to prevent a repeat of the last decade? In this, Schechter suggests that the Obama administration has been weak at best.
