In Debt We Trust

While many we may be "maxing out" on credit cards, there is a deeper story power is shifting into fewer hands... with frightening consequences.

IN DEBT WE TRUST shows how the mall replaced the factory as our dominant economic engine and how big banks and credit card companies buy our politicians and drive us into modern serfdom .

EXPERTS AGREE: A top government official compares our society today to Rome before its fall and warns that the bubble could burst. A former prosecutor says that many of these loans are worst than mafia loan-sharking practices. An ex-credit card executive explains how advertising campaigns are deliberately deceptive and misleading.

ROBIN HOOD OR ROBBING THE HOOD: A real estate expert reports that tens of billions of dollars, are being transferred from the pockets of the poor into the vaults of big banks which use front groups and subsidiaries to camouflage their association with rip-off loans charging exorbitant interest rates.

SCAMMING SOLDIERS: We visit a military base to learn that soldiers just back from Iraq are being victimized en masse by payday lenders.

What's been called the "democratization of credit" has led to the democratization of dependency. It has created an unsustainable society, trapping millions in a financial hole they can't escape from and often do not understand.

Over the past 25 years, we have moved from a society based on production to a nation driven by consumption; from a country that once shared its resources with the world to one deeply in debt to foreign banks and countries. As the growing number of bankruptcies and foreclosures testifies, our national debt is mirrored by a skyrocketing consumer debt, with an increasing number of individuals and families unable to cope.