The Con (2020)

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 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 Savings & Loan crisis of the late 1980s. Through interviews with those inside the 2008 crisis — regulators, former officials, foreclosure victims, industry whistleblowers, and journalists — Lovell connects 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.