In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Burst

Democracy Now
In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Burst
Wednesday, April 4th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/04/1343218

We take a look at a new documentary by veteran journalist and media critic Danny Schechter called "In Debt We Trust: America Before the Bubble Burst." The film 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."

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...all these kids, they want what everybody else has. They want to shop at the Gap. They want the nicest and the best and everything else. And they run up tremendous credit card balances, and then they can't pay. And we have not only suicides being reported of young people in despair over all of this, but kids leave school, and what do they do? They have to find the first job they can to pay back. They can't come and volunteer at Democracy Now! or mediachannel.org, because they have to pay off their loans. So their options, their life options, are being impacted by this, as well. That's why this debt problem is not just an economic issue, not just affecting housing, but affecting our whole society.

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100,000 veterans coming back from the Iraq war are in debt, and they’re dealing with these payday lenders. We were down in Norfolk, Virginia, around a naval base there. Last year, there had been three payday lenders. There are now thirty-six or twenty-six payday lenders and loan stores and what have you. People are going into hock, and they don't know how to get out of it. And we're talking about large numbers.

You know, I was given access by the Naval and Marine Corps Relief Society, not people I usually hang with, you know, because they want to call attention to this problem. And it affects everybody.

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