Review of Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2017) by Larry S — 20 Jan 2019

This doc, part of the superb PBS Frontline presentations, and directed by Steve James, gives us another infuriating example, at times, of the staggering hypocrisy of government prosecutors. Spending years and many millions of taxpayer dollars on building a mortgage fraud case against the family-owned Abacus Federal Savings Bank, in Chinatown, NYC. This, while giving the huge banks, "too big to fail" a $700 billion bailout for their fraudulent loan practices, costing the U.S. economy $22 trillion during the financial crisis beginning in 2008.

Abacus Federal, the 2651st largest bank in America, with its "huge" network of 6 branches, still remains the only bank ever indicted as a result of the 2008 crisis. Yes, you can see the bank made some mistakes mostly in their compliance policies, but in the overall scheme of things it was trivial in comparison to what the giant financial institutions were doing.

Overall, a most solid documentary which tried to present both sides' cases to the viewer.