What, already? The documentary of the year? Jed Rothstein's THE CHINA HUSTLE hits theaters and digital

Yes, TrustMovies realizes that the 2019 Oscar ceremony is eleven months away but he dearly hopes that over the coming year a small but massively important documentary entitled THE CHINA HUSTLE will not get lost nor be forgotten in the ensuing awards season chaos. Not unlike The Big Short in its righteous condemnation of Wall Street, the banking industry and the SEC, the documentary demonstrates (for anyone who still remains unconvinced) not only how little-to-nothing has been done to regulate our wretched finance industry in the years since the housing bubble burst but how newer and ever-more-sleazy scams have come down the pike to relieve investors, together with pension and retirement funds, of their resources.

Very well written and directed by Jed Rothstein (shown at right) in a manner that allows us to understand the ins and out of a rather complicated scheme/scam, the doc begins with a few voices, including that of Donald Trump, extolling the virtues of China, followed by a most interesting definition of Capitalism. We're then introduced to a fellow named Dan David (below), who immediately tells us, "There are no good guys in this story -- including me." Amen to that because we're back in the territory of short-selling stock, à la The Big Short, and just as with that situation and in that movie, the film here involves people who short sell at a great profit to them, while everyone else in the picture loses.

And yet in The China Hustle this short selling appears to be the only way in which these sleazy scams by China, together with the help of our own financial industry, can be stopped -- since neither the SEC nor our government will do anything to prevent this outright fraud, in which Chinese companies claim huge profitability and/or growth for investors but in reality offer nothing of the kind.

How is this possible -- particularly after all the horrible effects of our earlier financial meltdown? Rothstein's documentary explains this quite thoroughly, cleverly and interestingly: It involves something called Reverse Mergers, in which a company (in this case one based in mainland China) gains a listing on U.S. Stock Exchange by way of buying the corporate shell of a defunct U.S. company that is still trading on that stock exchange. It then promotes the newly merged company’s supposed potential for "enormous" growth -- all of which is utterly fake.

The tale of how this happened (it's still happening) and why, and how these frauds came to light, becomes a truly enthralling kind of mystery during which, along the way, quite a set of fraudsters are exposed from under their rocks. Some of these -- that supposed icon of virtue, Wesley Clark (above) is one such -- may surprise you with their embarrassing behavior. Others will seem pretty much like the usual suspects, finance-industry version. And while Mr. David reminds us that nobody's a hero here, a few of the folk we meet would certainly seem to qualify in my book, particularly the young Chinese man who did research in China for one of the fellows who helped expose all this and for his time and trouble went to prison.

Still, heroes or not, some of the (mostly) men we meet here are pretty damned fascinating, as are the various jobs they do -- from Matt Weichert (shown below) and his friend Soren to Jon Carnes (aka "Alfred Little") and Carson Block, the CEO of Muddy Waters (because, as the Chinese proverb goes: You can't catch fish in clear water). Director Rothstein, in addition to making the scams come to such immediate life, also involves us a bit in the life and family of Dan David, as well as in a particular culture of China known as Gwang Hi (trading favors) that makes these dreadful deals all the easier to perform.

Wall Street, it appears, has developed a whole new way to scam -- with the "illegality" arising in and from China, making it difficult if not impossible to prosecute here. We hear about Roth Capital, a company involved in so many of these sleaze deals, during which between 2006 and 2012 over 400 Chinese companies managed to list themselves, via the American shell companies, on the NYSE. An estimated $14,000,000,000 in public pension and retirement funds have now been lost to these Chinese reverse merger frauds. And, as usual -- concerning Wall Street, the Banks and "investment" -- the supposed "gatekeepers" remain either outright sleazy or just intentionally ignorant.

Like The Big Short, this film will make you angry enough to see red. And I do not mean just red China. Yes, the Chinese have proven themselves worthless scammers (it is not at all illegal in China to defraud foreign investors), but more of the responsibility lies with the American creeps who have negotiated and profited from all this. Not that most of us any longer have money left to invest, but on the chance that you do, if China is at all involved -- stay the fuck away.

No film I've seen in a long while has made me as angry as this one. Our sleazy finance industry needs an adversary as strong and organized as the student anti-gun movement has so far proven against the NRA. Perhaps, when they've won this battle, the kids can turn their attention to Wall Street. From Magnolia Pictures and running 82 minutes, The China Hustle opens this Friday, March 30, in New York City at the IFC Center and the Landmark 57 West and in Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt, as well as in cities all around the country. To find a theater near you, click here. Simultaneously with its theatrical release, the film will appear on digital and VOD platforms.

Danny Schechter goes after Wall Street in PLUNDER: THE CRIME OF OUR TIME

Anyone who saw investigative reporter Danny Schechter's documentaries Weapons of Mass Deception or In Debt We Trust will know that Mr. Schechter has a problem with our national media.  He finds it wanting: too easily misled by the powers that be (read government and money).  Many other of us, inclu-
ding TrustMovies, agree with him.

In his new documen-
tary PLUNDER: THE CRIME OF OUR TIME, Schechter again blames the collusion of media, government and money for the current crisis regarding Wall Street.

In fact, this filmmaker, as does many others, calls the place and its product criminal and wants the perpetrators brought to justice. From his 100-minute documentary -- full of interviews, talking heads, protests and more -- two themes emerge: that the current crisis (which just keeps growing, with more Goldman Sachs revelations daily) was indeed criminal, and that the media, in their usual, closed-ranks manner has approved the official and untrue line of something accidental happening and being then made worse by the happenstance of a "perfect storm" of problems.
Bullshit, says Schechter.

Further, he tell us, the national media has been much harder on the people who have defaulted on their loans than on the lenders who came up with the "crooked" deals.  One of Schechter's most salient points is that, our media is every bit as embedded with the financial industry (and its government counterpart) now as it was with the military (and its government counterpart) at the start of the Iraq & Afghanistan Wars.  In both cases, truth is the inevitable casualty.

There is plenty to make you angry here, although some of it has been seen else-
where (Leslie Cockburn's American Casino and Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, for instance).  Because Schechter (shown at right, with the golden calf -- whoops -- bull) is indicting Wall Street as criminal, it would have been good, I think, if he had stayed on-message a bit more and acted as a prosecutor might in piling up more and better evidence of criminality.  Instead he is all over the place -- from protesters out of work (and banks that will not honor their commitments) to homeowners evicted from their homes and Wall Street professionals talking about how they do their jobs.

Most of this will appeal to progressives, all right, and it's important that we hear it.  Particularly succulent are the filmmaker's points about our media -- which seem to be currently under attack from all sides, including the ever-strengthening internet -- being all too often in lockstep with power and money. Plunder is worth viewing, even if, on balance, you feel that Schechter might have put these 100 minutes to somewhat better use.

In his Q&A that followed the film's premier "theatrical" screening last Thursday, April 29, at the prestigious and lovably old-fashioned National Arts Club in Manhattan, the filmmaker reminded us that a major demonstration of thousands of protesters had taken place on Wall Street that very day. It will be interesting, he suggested, to see what the media makes of this.  TrustMovies could find nothing about this in the following days' edition of  The New York Times or The New York Post.  Maybe you had better luck.

Plunder: The Crime of Our Time is available now for purchase from its distributor, Disinformation Films, or via Amazon and elsewhere.  For rental, you can find it on Netflix (as of today: long wait) and Blockbuster (as of today: short wait) if not from your local video store (if that one's still around: We here in Jackson Heights just recently lost another). I believe the film is also available for download via iTunes.  In any case, you can click here to access the movie's official site and go from there....