Inside the Meltdown: A new film illuminates the economy’s collapse

Last year more than 2.3 million homeowners faced foreclosure proceedings. Today nearly 5 million people in the United States are unemployed. It’s clear that we are in an economic crisis and that the housing market bust was the first of many dominoes to fall. But when terms like ?toxic assets, ? ?commercial paper,? and ?credit default swaps? become part of the everyday vernacular, the chain of events that got us to this economic slump remains a source of confusion. In a new FRONTLINE documentary, Inside the Meltdown, filmmaker Michael Kirk puts the pieces of the fractured economy’s puzzle back together. He joins us to discuss how he threaded a narrative out of something that seems largely an abstract force all its own.