June 26 – The Junk Bond Deal That Made Mitt; “The Great Dismantling”; A Syrian Film Maker Who Testified Before the International Criminal Court

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Part 1	We begin with Beth Healy, a financial investigative reporter with the Boston Globe who has uncovered Mitt Romney’s transformative 1988 business deal which turned a $10 million dollar investment into a $175 million profit for him and Bain Capital. We discuss this deal that was financed by junk bond king Michael Milken who at the time was under an SEC investigation that led to his conviction and imprisonment. A time Romney refers to as “the glorious days” of Drexel Burnham, quoting him, “it was fun while it lasted”.
Part 2	Then the author of “Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States”, Michael Lind, joins us in the studio. We discuss America’s economic history, in particular the current era we are in that began in the mid seventies, the “Great Dismantling” as Michael Lind calls it. An era where the household wealth and living standard of most Americans has stagnated or declined, while the wealthiest one percent have benefited from increased productivity, accruing most if not all of the additional wealth.
Part 3	Then finally a Syrian-born film maker Sam Kadi joins us in the studio. The director of a new feature film “The Citizen” which is about a Lebanese immigrant who comes to America just before 9/11, he recently testified before the International Criminal Court in The Hague about the on-going slaughter of Syrian civilians by the Assad regime. Atrocities which film makers like Sami’s murdered colleague Basel and others, risk their lives to document.
	MUSIC: Titus Andronicus – Four Score and Seven; The Shins – No Way Down; Big Rock Candy Mountain; Built To Spill – Things Fall Apart