The cause of his own downfall
What sort of story can you build to better express the human ramifications of the global financial crisis?
Everyone knows bankers brought the economy to its knees only to be rewarded by government bail outs paid by the tax payers they conned in the first place. Private profit, public risk. Stealing from the tax payers they robbed is a good (if somewhat sad) twist.
How do you humanize institutional theft by the richest one percent of society? How do you tell a story of greed so rampant that it almost destroyed the global economy and took every man, woman and child down with it?
How do you show the corporatization of our political system? How our systems of law and justice now serve and protect corporations, not citizens. How government serves business, not people.
Maybe a revenge story? Working class brother ripped off by Wall Street brother who is ultimately ripped off by his firm?
Maybe a legal story where a young graduate joins a prestigious Washington law firm only to discover it’s colluding with the justice department and treasury to ensure no one responsible for the collapse will ever face legal proceedings? A junior partner dies. A trove of secret emails reveals the level of corruption.
Maybe an underdog story about a former criminal joining a law firm, uncovering fraudulent home loans and foreclosures, and helping embattled home owners being screwed over by the courts?
Maybe a crisis of confidence story about a Wall Street high flyer who is mugged, beaten almost to death for his cash and new IWC watch and comes to realize he is the cause of his own downfall?
What premise best drives the story?