Eric S. Vaughan’s The Con is a 5-part original crime docuseries of an in-depth investigation into the 2008 financial crisis, available to watch in virtual cinemas August 7th.
The 2008 financial crisis seemed to hit the American landscape out of nowhere. But in reality, it was both the inevitable conclusion to 40 years of Wall Street misconduct and a warning for the meltdown that threatens to engulf us now. In the gripping, original five-part docuseries The Con, filmmaker Patrick Lovell investigates what happened, beginning with personal stories — including the foreclosure of his own Utah home, and the suicide of a 91-year-old African American widow in Akron, Ohio — before zooming out to examine the corrupt systems that doomed the United States to government funded bailouts that would only perpetuate a predatory system.
Lovell also looks back to when the government properly functioned for the people it represented by holding banks accountable during the Great Depression and rescuing the country from the S&L Crisis of the late 1980s. Through interviews with those inside the 2008 crisis — regulators, former officials, foreclosure victims, industry whistleblowers, and journalists — Lovell and writer-director Eric Vaughan connect the dots to what America used to be, and most crucially, where we’re going in 2020, as nearly 40 million Americans are claiming unemployment by summer 2020.
Written and Directed by ERIC S. VAUGHAN, The Con features interviews with: Jesse Eisinger (journalist, author, Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2011) Dean Baker (whistleblower, TARP), William K. Black (author, expert on white-collar crime), Richard Bowen (whistleblower, Citigroup), Martha Coakley (former Attorney General, MA), William Cohan (business writer), Mark Dann (former Attorney General, Ohio) Gary Aguirrie, (SEC whistleblower) Thomas Frank (The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-populism), Michael W. Hudson (Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist), Gary Rivlin (Broke, USA: From Pawnshops To Poverty, Inc.-How the Working Poor Became Big Business), Chris Swecker (Former Assistant Director of Criminal Investigative Division, FBI, Michael Winston (whistleblower, Countrywide Financial) and many more.
Among the many heartbreaks and horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cracks exposed in the fragile financial tapestry of the world’s biggest economy is more evidence that The Con is still on.