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Dick Fuld
Photo Credit: Reuters
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HOUR 1: The Men Who Crashed the World
Greed and recklessness by the titans of Wall Street triggers
the largest financial crash since the Great Depression. It's left to US
Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, himself a former Wall Street banker, to try
and avert further disaster.
HOUR 2: A Global Tsunami
The meltdown's devastation ripples around the world from
California to Iceland and China. Facing economic ruin, desperate world leaders
are at each other's throats.
HOUR 3: Paying the Price
The victims of the meltdown fight back. In Iceland, protestors
force a government to fall. In Canada, ripped off autoworkers occupy their
plant. And in France, furious union members kidnap their bosses.
HOUR 4: After the Fall
Investigators begin to sift through the meltdown's rubble.
Shaken world leaders question the very foundations of modern capitalism while
asking: could it all happen again?
Meltdown also tells the stories of desperate foreclosed
homeowners in California, disillusioned autoworkers at the end of the line in
Ontario and furious workers in France who shocked the world by kidnapping their
own bosses.
Since the financial meltdown began, trillions of dollars have
been spent rescuing banks and jumpstarting economies, yet recovery remains
fragile. Fears abound of a “double-dip” return to recession. The millions
around the world who lost homes and jobs are demanding answers: How did it all
go so wrong? Who is to blame? They are angry because to date, only a few
smalltime players have been held to account. No major banking, regulatory or
government figures have yet been convicted of any wrongdoing.
Meltdown is the first comprehensive documentary portrait of
the worst economic crisis of a generation.
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Evicted homeowner in California
Photo Credit: CBC
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- Geraint Anderson,
aka “City Boy” – This hippie-turned-stockbroker in England reveals the dirty
secrets of high finance. He says lying and cheating were all part of the
high-stakes game.
- Dick Fuld – A true
Wall Street predator. As CEO of Lehman Brothers, Fuld boasted he’d rip out and
eat his enemies’ hearts. Instead, he watched his own empire collapse beneath
his feet.
- Hank Paulson –As US
Treasury Secretary, he lurched from crisis to crisis during the meltdown. On
his watch, the U.S. spent trillions to bail out Wall Street companies,
including Paulson’s old firm, Goldman Sachs.
- Sheikh Mohammed bin
Rashid al-Maktoum – The self-styled CEO of Dubai, Inc built an astonishing real
estate empire. Bigger was always better, until it turned out to be largely a
mirage.
- Marcy Kaptur – This
Congresswoman from Ohio is an outspoken voice for the families decimated by the
Great Recession. She’s demanding that the bankers responsible pay up.
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Floor of the New York Stock Exchange
Photo Credit: CBC
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HARD FACTS
Half of America owns only 2.5% of country's wealth. The top
1% owns a third of it.
The gap between the top 0.01% and everyone else hasn't been
this bad since the Roaring Twenties.
In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheque to
the average worker's paycheque was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that
ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
In 2008, the total national household debt in Canada has
reached an all-time high of $1.3 trillion. A survey found that 42% of
respondents said their personal debt was rising in the past three years, and
21%said they couldn't manage their debt.
61% of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck
to paycheck, which was up from 49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007. The numbers are
similar in Canada.
A staggering 43% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved
up for retirement.
In America today, the average time needed to find a job has
risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
In 2008, the World Economic Forum rated Canada's banking
system No. 1 in
the world. The U.S. came in right behind — Namibia.
It is being projected that the U.S. government will have a
budget deficit of approximately 1.6 trillion dollars in 2010. How much is that?
If you went out and spent one dollar every single second, it would take you
more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.
In February 2010, there were 5.5 unemployed Americans for
every job opening.
In California’s Central Valley, 1 out of every 16 homes is
in some phase of foreclosure.
U.S. banks repossessed nearly 258,000 homes nationwide in
the first quarter of 2010, a
35% jump from the first quarter of 2009.
In May 2009, the number of Canadians getting regular
employment insurance benefits in reached 778,700, the highest level on
comparable records going back 12 years. During the month, the number of people
getting EI benefits grew by 9.2%, from April.
More than 24% of all homes with mortgages in the United
States were underwater (the mortgage is more than the current market value of
the home) as of the end of 2009.
This recession has erased 8 million private sector jobs in
the United States.
39.68 million Americans are now on food stamps, which
represents a new all-time record. But things look like they are going to get
even worse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecastingthat enrollment in
the food stamp program will exceed 43 million Americans in 2011.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average just experienced the worst
May it has seen since 1940.
If you only make the minimum payment each and every time, a
$6,000 credit card bill can end up costing you over $30,000 (depending on the
interest rate).
Approximately 21% of all children in the United States are
living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
In 2010 the U.S. government is projected to issue almost as
much new debt as the rest of the governments of the world combined.
In 2009, U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in private
lending since 1942.
During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans
that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the
16th consecutive quarter.
As of February 2009, there were 111,500 employees working in
motor vehicle assembly and parts, down 37% from its peak in 2001, according to
a Stats Canada report.
According to a Pew Research Center study, approximately 37%
of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 have either been unemployed or
underemployed at some point during the recession.
For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater
share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual
Americans put together.
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