When the financial crisis arrived, it seemed to me that this was something I had to make a movie about.

I thought I should try something relatively inexpensive, relatively contained, relatively small. I started working on a feature, a film I'd still like to make: a very talky film of people and ideas about our contemporary state with regard to relationships, marriage, sex, and romance. I started trying to educate myself about filmmaking.

I sort of plunged into filmmaking. I decided I'd jump off the deep end, so I started thinking about what kind of a movie I should try to make.

You shall hear a good account of me or of my death.

I used to be a businessman and I enjoyed what I did and I thought that it was socially useful. I don't have anything against business or private enterprise or capitalism per se, but I think that it is time to rethink the regulation of capitalism.

When the U.S. government is serious about doing something that's complicated and difficult, it can do it.

But that's not how most of the people mentioned in this book became wealthy. Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful.