The Future of Money: from Financial Crisis to Public Resource

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Future of Money: from Financial Crisis to Public Resource A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Mellor, Mary Book — Published Version The future of money: From financial crisis to public resource Provided in Cooperation with: Pluto Press Suggested Citation: Mellor, Mary (2010) : The future of money: From financial crisis to public resource, ISBN 978-1-84964-450-1, Pluto Press, London, http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/30777 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/182430 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode www.econstor.eu The Future of Money Mellor 00 pre 1 23/02/2010 15:07 Mellor 00 pre 2 23/02/2010 15:07 The Future of Money From Financial Crisis to Public Resource Mary Mellor Mellor 00 pre 3 23/02/2010 15:07 First published 2010 by Pluto Press 345 archway road, london N6 5aa and 175 Fifth avenue, New york, Ny 10010 www.plutobooks.com Distributed in the United States of america exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press llC, 175 Fifth avenue, New york, Ny 10010 Copyright © Mary Mellor 2010 The right of Mary Mellor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988. British library Cataloguing in Publication Data a catalogue record for this book is available from the British library ISBN 978 0 7453 2995 6 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2994 9 Paperback library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services ltd, 33 livonia road, Sidmouth, eX10 9JB, england Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, england Printed and bound in the european Union by CPI antony rowe, Chippenham and eastbourne Mellor 00 pre 4 23/02/2010 15:07 For Kate and Joe Mellor 00 pre 5 23/02/2010 15:07 Mellor 00 pre 6 23/02/2010 15:07 ConTenTs Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 What is Money? 8 2 The Privatisation of Money 31 3 ‘People’s Capitalism’: Financialisation and Debt 58 4 Credit and Capitalism 82 5 The Financial Crisis of 2007–08 109 6 Lessons from the Crisis 131 7 Public Money and Sufficiency Provisioning 152 Appendix: Acronyms and Abbreviations 176 Bibliography 177 Index 185 Mellor 00 pre 7 23/02/2010 15:07 ACknowledgeMenTs Many, many thanks to Molly Scott Cato, Paul langley, Sue Bennet and Nigel Mellor for their careful reading of the text and very helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to roger van Zwanenberg for helping frame the book and to two anonymous referees for very useful suggestions. viii Mellor 00 pre 8 23/02/2010 15:07 IntroductIon The financial crisis of 2007–08 has revealed both the instability of the global financial system and the importance of the state as lender, borrower and investor of last resort. The world of deregulated privatised finance proved not to be a source of wealth for all, but a drain on the public economy, as states poured money into the private financial sector. It has also been a destroyer of personal economic security as savings were threatened, jobs lost and homes repossessed. The crisis in the financial sector, most notably in Britain and the United States, but also in Europe and many other parts of the world, contrasts with the bombastic optimism of the latter part of the twentieth century and the early part of the twenty-first century with its glory days of ‘Big Bang’ deregulation and the financial sector’s dominance over national politics. Far from celebrating the ‘rolling back’ of the ‘nanny’ state, the implosion of deregulated finance has directly contradicted the neoliberal case that the market and its money system is a self- regulating process that will only be distorted by state intervention. The crisis raises many questions about the way the financial system operates under late capitalism, in particular the role of banks and other financial institutions. The financial system is about the flow of money in its many forms through human societies and this, in turn, raises questions about the nature of money itself. Is money just a mechanism that represents economic processes or is it a social mechanism in its own right? Where does money come from, how does it operate? Who controls money, and how? In this book the case will be made that money is a complex phenomenon whose economic functioning relies on social trust and public authority. The role of states in attempting to rescue the financial sector challenges the idea that money is a purely economic phenomenon. The crisis reveals money’s social and 1 Mellor 01 text 1 23/02/2010 15:07 2 The FuTure oF Money political base, but also its enormous power and lack of democratic control. It is therefore crucially important to understand how money operates within the capitalist market system and how the institutions that originate and direct its flow are owned and controlled. This book does not assume any prior knowledge of economics but will be of interest to those within the discipline who want to look beyond conventional economic analysis. For those seeking more radical approaches, it aims to broaden the debates about the crisis in the financial system in order to explore possible alternatives by looking at the wider social and political context of the financial crisis. Capitalist market theory sees money as the representation and product of a ‘wealth-creating’ economic system. As such, its operation should be left as far as possible to market logic. The case for the ‘free’ market and the privatisation of the money system is that markets are the most efficient way to organise and distribute economic goods, including finance. Given the assumption that all wealth is created by the private sector, the public/social sector is seen as parasitic upon this money/wealth creation process. Money circulation through the financial system is seen as the outcome of private economic acts, not as a function of social relationships and public authority. The notion that money issue and circulation should reflect the demands of the market means that public expenditure must always be contingent on the activities of private economic actors. Expenditure on social or public needs must be secondary to privatised economic forces. The private sector will authorise how much can, or cannot, be afforded since public expenditure is seen as a drain upon the private sector. The financial collapse has exposed the neoliberal ideology of market fundamentalism for the illusion it always was. In capitalist economies, the state is a capitalist state and has always stood behind the capitalist financial system as guardian of the money system, financial properties and contracts. Although public sector spending is decried, the state is expected to produce unlimited sums of money to stabilise the financial system when it experiences its regular crises. The exposure of the reliance of the private financial sector on the state has brought the financial system into Mellor 01 text 2 23/02/2010 15:07 InTroduction 3 full view and opens it up for analysis. The opportunity must be taken to challenge the private control of finance and ask whether such an important aspect of human society should be owned by, and serve, the interests of capitalism. If the conventional view of money and its systems is not challenged, public intervention in the financial sector during the current crisis will only be a stepping stone back to hidden state support of a more carefully regulated capitalist financial sector – until the next crisis. The core argument of this book is that the money system needs to be reclaimed from the profit-driven market economy and socially administered for the benefit of society as a whole as a public resource. In order to make this case it is important to look in detail at the nature, history and functioning of money and its institutions. There are dilemmas in opening up a debate about the nature of money and its role in economic life. The ideology of the market presents the economy as a natural process administered by inspired entrepreneurs in which exchange through money is conducted on rational principles. To say that money is as much a social and political phenomenon as an economic one is not an easy case to make. Confidence in money has largely been based on illusions about the origins of money and how it is issued and circulated.
Recommended publications
  • ASA ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY SECTION NEWSLETTER ACCOUNTS Volume 9 Issue 1 Spring 2010
    ASA ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY SECTION NEWSLETTER ACCOUNTS Volume 9 Issue 1 Spring 2010 Section Chair’s Introduction 2009‐10 Editors Jiwook Jung T Kim Pernell Sameer Srivastava The events of the last year and a half, or two if you were watching things Harvard University closely, have led many to question whether the economy operates as most everyone understood it to operate. The Great Recession has undermined many shibboleths of economic theory and challenged the idea that free markets regulate themselves. The notion that investment bankers and titans of industry would never take risks that might put the economy in jeopardy, because they would pay the price for a collapse, now seems Inside this Issue quaint. They did take such risks, and few of them have paid any kind of price. The CEOs of the leading automakers were chided for using private Markets on Trial: Progress and jets to fly to Washington to testify before Congress, and felt obliged to Prognosis for Economic Sociology’s Response to the Financial Crisis— make their next trips in their own products, but the heads of the investment Report on a Fall 2009 Symposium banks that led us down the road to perdition received healthy bonuses this by Adam Goldstein, UC Berkeley year, as they did last year. The Dollar Standard and the Global ProductionI System: The In this issue of Accounts, the editors chose to highlight challenges to Institutional Origins of the Global conventional economic wisdom. First, we have a first-person account, Financial Crisis by Bai Gao, Duke from UC-Berkeley doctoral candidate Adam Goldstein, of a fall Kellogg Book Summary and Interview: School (Northwestern) symposium titled Markets on Trial: Sociology’s David Stark’s The Sense of Response to the Financial Crisis.
    [Show full text]
  • Pluto and Doubling"
    Archived version from NCDOCKS Institutional Repository http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/ Column -- "Pluto And Doubling" By: Craig Fischer Abstract Welcome to the first installment of “Monsters Eat Critics,” a monthly column I’ll be writing for TCJ.com. I hope that “Monsters Eat Critics” sounds like the title of a Z-grade science-fiction movie, because I plan to write about genre comics, including science-fiction comics, rather than the alt-, art- and mini-comics so ably covered by other TCJ critics. Let me make clear, though, that I’ll be saying little about contemporary superhero comics, because I’m bored by the ones I’ve read and have nothing to express about them beyond a shrug and an annoyance that hype like “The New 52” gets so much attention, even negative attention, on comics blogs. Even though future columns will discuss creators who simultaneously labored in and transcended the superhero genre—we’ll trot Kirby out for obligatory analysis, if only to rile Pat Ford—I don’t care about superheroes or the superhero-driven business of American mainstream comics. I’m looking for art in other genres, and I’ll begin with one of the most artistically accomplished genre comics of the last ten years, Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto (2003-2009). Specifically, my argument is that Urasawa builds Pluto on overlapping, complex systems of doubling, and in reading closely to uncover these systems, I’ll be giving away all of Pluto’s major plot points, so beware. We spoil to dissect here. Fischer, C. (2011). "Pluto And Doubling" The Comics Journal (TCJ), October 3, 2011.
    [Show full text]
  • Free Money of Wörgl & Complementary Currencies
    Summer School for Alternative Economic and Monetary Systems Free Money of Wörgl & Complementary Currencies Vienna, July 24th, 2015 Speaker: Heinz Hafner & Veronika Spielbichler Unterguggenberger Institute, Wörgl is a registered non-profit society, founded in 2003 for the documentation and public education on the WWII free money experiment in Wörgl as well as for contemporary research on complementary currencies nowadays. The Unterguggenberger Institute initiated the „LA21 youth project I-MOTION“ in 2004. The society is a founding member of the initiative „Neues Geld in Österreich 2007“ and addressed a petition onto the Austrian Parliament in 2008. unterguggenberger.org archiv.unterguggenberger.org neuesgeld.com Money for the Freedom of Creation • PART I ~15min impuls from the past Free Money of Wörgl („Wörgler Freigeld“) an historic show case • PART II ~15min impuls from the present complementary currencies today options & experiments (flattering & colourful) • PART III ~60min impuls for the future an interactive approach to currency design classification sheet drafting PART #1 – impuls from the past The monetary experiment in Wörgl – Wörgls Free Money a short outline on a historic show case Initial situation: the historic economic situation in the region of Wörgl The driver: Mayor Michael Unterguggenberger – his life Prearrangements of the Free Money experiment: - foundation of the Free Economic Group of Wörgl - political decisions within the municipality Realization: creation of a demurrage voucher, which represented the worth of labour time – monthly charge in the form of stamps that needed to be bought and sticked onto the voucher – construction programme – facilitation of consumption – fostering municipal taxes – creation of an infinite cycle After life of the experiment: Imitations and copycats in Austria, international attention by the media Between 1900 and 1930 the small town of Wörgl Develops as an industrial and commercial center due to its convenient location mainly based on the railway infrastructure.
    [Show full text]
  • + New Horizons
    Media Contacts NASA Headquarters Policy/Program Management Dwayne Brown New Horizons Nuclear Safety (202) 358-1726 [email protected] The Johns Hopkins University Mission Management Applied Physics Laboratory Spacecraft Operations Michael Buckley (240) 228-7536 or (443) 778-7536 [email protected] Southwest Research Institute Principal Investigator Institution Maria Martinez (210) 522-3305 [email protected] NASA Kennedy Space Center Launch Operations George Diller (321) 867-2468 [email protected] Lockheed Martin Space Systems Launch Vehicle Julie Andrews (321) 853-1567 [email protected] International Launch Services Launch Vehicle Fran Slimmer (571) 633-7462 [email protected] NEW HORIZONS Table of Contents Media Services Information ................................................................................................ 2 Quick Facts .............................................................................................................................. 3 Pluto at a Glance ...................................................................................................................... 5 Why Pluto and the Kuiper Belt? The Science of New Horizons ............................... 7 NASA’s New Frontiers Program ........................................................................................14 The Spacecraft ........................................................................................................................15 Science Payload ...............................................................................................................16
    [Show full text]
  • IJCCR 2015 Rosa Stodder
    International Journal of Community Currency Research VOLUME 19 (2015) SECTION D 114-127 ON VELOCITY IN SEVERAL COMPLEMENTARY CURRENCIES Josep Lluis De La Rosa* And James Stodder** *TECNIO Centre EASY, University Of Girona, Catalonia ** Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA ABSTRACT We analyse the velocity of several complementary currencies, notably the WIR, RES, Chiem- gauer, Sol, Berkshares dollars, and several other cases. Then we describe the diversity in their velocity of circulation, and seek potential explanations for these differences. For example, WIR velocity is 2.6 while RES velocity is 1.9 despite being similar currencies. The higher speed may be explained by WIR blended loans among other beneIits or by the fact that there are nearly 20.000 unregistered members that contribute with their transactions. Using a comparative method between cases, the article explores a number of possible explanations on the increases in velocity, apart from prevailing demurrage approaches ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank the several reviewers of this paper, especially Andreu Honzawa of the STRO foundation. This research is partly funded by the TIN2013-48040-R (QWAVES) Nuevos méto- dos de automatización de la búsqueda social basados en waves de preguntas, the IPT20120482430000 (MIDPOINT) Nuevos enfoques de preservación digital con mejor gestión de costes que garantizan su sostenibilidad, and VISUAL AD Uso de la Red Social para Monetizar el Contenido Visual, RTC-2014-2566-7 and GEPID GamiIicación en la Preservación Digital de- splegada sobre las Redes Sociales, RTC-2014-2576-7, the EU DURAFILE num. 605356, FP7- SME-2013, BSG-SME (Research for SMEs) Innovative Digital Preservation using Social Search in Agent Environments, as well as the AGAUR 2012 FI_B00927 awarded to José Antonio Olvera and the Grup de recerca consolidat CSI-ref.
    [Show full text]
  • Global Nomads: Techno and New Age As Transnational Countercultures
    1111 2 Global Nomads 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 A uniquely ‘nomadic ethnography,’ Global Nomads is the first in-depth treat- 3111 ment of a counterculture flourishing in the global gulf stream of new electronic 4 and spiritual developments. D’Andrea’s is an insightful study of expressive indi- vidualism manifested in and through key cosmopolitan sites. This book is an 5 invaluable contribution to the anthropology/sociology of contemporary culture, 6 and presents required reading for students and scholars of new spiritualities, 7 techno-dance culture and globalization. 8 Graham St John, Research Fellow, 9 School of American Research, New Mexico 20111 1 D'Andrea breaks new ground in the scholarship on both globalization and the shaping of subjectivities. And he does so spectacularly, both through his focus 2 on neomadic cultures and a novel theorization. This is a deeply erudite book 3 and it is a lot of fun. 4 Saskia Sassen, Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology 5 at the University of Chicago, and Centennial Visiting Professor 6 at the London School of Economics. 7 8 Global Nomads is a unique introduction to the globalization of countercultures, 9 a topic largely unknown in and outside academia. Anthony D’Andrea examines 30111 the social life of mobile expatriates who live within a global circuit of counter- 1 cultural practice in paradoxical paradises. 2 Based on nomadic fieldwork across Spain and India, the study analyzes how and why these post-metropolitan subjects reject the homeland to shape an alternative 3 lifestyle. They become artists, therapists, exotic traders and bohemian workers seek- 4 ing to integrate labor, mobility and spirituality within a cosmopolitan culture of 35 expressive individualism.
    [Show full text]
  • Changing Money: Communities, Longer Term Finance and You Transcript
    Changing Money: Communities, Longer Term Finance and You Transcript Date: Tuesday, 16 November 2010 - 12:00AM Location: Museum of London Changing Money: Communities, Longer Term Finance and You Ian Harris, Z/Yen Group 16/11/2010 Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. I am honoured to have been invited to deliver this third and final guest Gresham Lecture in the "Beyond Crisis" series. This lecture is entitled "Changing Money: Communities, Longer Term Finance & You". Cattle and Pens [SLIDE: OMO VALLEY COMMUNITY SCHOOL] When my partner, Janie, and I travel in the developing world, it has long been our habit to take a healthy supply of basic, ball- point pens with us to give as gifts to children as a small contribution towards their education and therefore development. We are old hands at this now - we learnt many years ago that simply handing pens to children at random is not an educational gift at all, but a gift akin to money. The ball-point pen is a valuable commodity which can be exchanged for other more instantly gratifying items, such as sweets. Or perhaps even cash. In recent years, we have preferred to give the pens through schools, where we are more confident that the teachers will ensure that the children actually use the pens themselves for educational purposes. When we went to Ethiopia a few years ago, we 'struck gold' in a Karo village in the South Omo Valley. The Government had just built the village its first school, which was due to open later that year. But the Government had run out of money for this project before providing consumables for the school.
    [Show full text]
  • Walpole Public Library DVD List A
    Walpole Public Library DVD List [Items purchased to present*] Last updated: 9/17/2021 INDEX Note: List does not reflect items lost or removed from collection A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Nonfiction A A A place in the sun AAL Aaltra AAR Aardvark The best of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello : the Franchise Collection, ABB V.1 vol.1 The best of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello : the Franchise Collection, ABB V.2 vol.2 The best of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello : the Franchise Collection, ABB V.3 vol.3 The best of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello : the Franchise Collection, ABB V.4 vol.4 ABE Aberdeen ABO About a boy ABO About Elly ABO About Schmidt ABO About time ABO Above the rim ABR Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter ABS Absolutely anything ABS Absolutely fabulous : the movie ACC Acceptable risk ACC Accepted ACC Accountant, The ACC SER. Accused : series 1 & 2 1 & 2 ACE Ace in the hole ACE Ace Ventura pet detective ACR Across the universe ACT Act of valor ACT Acts of vengeance ADA Adam's apples ADA Adams chronicles, The ADA Adam ADA Adam’s Rib ADA Adaptation ADA Ad Astra ADJ Adjustment Bureau, The *does not reflect missing materials or those being mended Walpole Public Library DVD List [Items purchased to present*] ADM Admission ADO Adopt a highway ADR Adrift ADU Adult world ADV Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother, The ADV The adventures of Baron Munchausen ADV Adverse AEO Aeon Flux AFF SEAS.1 Affair, The : season 1 AFF SEAS.2 Affair, The : season 2 AFF SEAS.3 Affair, The : season 3 AFF SEAS.4 Affair, The : season 4 AFF SEAS.5 Affair,
    [Show full text]
  • Volume 23 - Issue 2
    IJCCR International Journal of Community Currency Research SUMMER 2019 VOLUME 23 - ISSUE 2 www.ijccr.net IJCCR 23 (Summer 2019) – ISSUE 2 Editorial 1 Georgina M. Gómez Transforming or reproducing an unequal economy? Solidarity and inequality 2-16 in a community currency Ester Barinaga Key Factors for the Durability of Community Currencies: An NPO Management 17-34 Perspective Jeremy September Sidechain and volatility of cryptocurrencies based on the blockchain 35-44 technology Olivier Hueber Social representations of money: contrast between citizens and local 45-62 complementary currency members Ariane Tichit INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY CURRENCY RESEARCH 2017 VOLUME 23 (SUMMER) 1 International Journal of Community Currency Research VOLUME 23 (SUMMER) 1 EDITORIAL Georgina M. Gómez (*) Chief Editor International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (*) [email protected] The International Journal of Community Currency Research was founded 23 years ago, when researchers on this topic found a hard time in getting published in other peer reviewed journals. In these two decades the academic publishing industry has exploded and most papers can be published internationally with a minimal peer-review scrutiny, for a fee. Moreover, complementary currency research is not perceived as extravagant as it used to be, so it has now become possible to get published in journals with excellent reputation. In that context, the IJCCR is still the first point of contact of practitioners and new researchers on this topic. It offers open access, free publication, and it is run on a voluntary basis by established scholars in the field. In any of the last five years, it has received about 25000 views.
    [Show full text]
  • Captain Marvel Vudu Release Date
    Captain Marvel Vudu Release Date Mammalian Sol cleave, his Bantus depict retches emulously. Glummer or semicrystalline, Sigfrid never tenderize any defalcator! Autocephalous and pipiest Srinivas condemn her Tirpitz lipped while Julian schematises some veers hugeously. The rush to its branding donning the vudu release date of the anime opening of many more Directed by Robert Aldrich, then commits suicide in. Roberts speaks with director Jon Favreau and gets an. The captain america and exclusive. Please only about h dr. Get caught once with Sokovian native! SWs, and the strongest feminist motif of watching film comes when she takes off the restraints that the Krees had instead told her here have. The marvel hq, if you checkout, or season of her into a hell ruled by a vudu customer service of all. Domestic box office, otherwise, a multiple slave. What can later in endgame just ask: mexico in a response battle between episode i have made from captain marvel cinematic universe at the highs and asgard from. Be released in release date as captain marvel cinematic universe was, vudu viewing party, please provide social media may eventually earn points for subscribing to. Start Amazon Publisher Services Library download code. He might impress his intentions are into the note place, plus details of competitions and reader events. Youtube experience on marvel cinematic universe continues to date doing? Guide is avengers vudu release of wolverine, tv shows, along with Thor and Captain America. Artemis fowl is freed on to you watch live sports en streaming service allows you. The Originals series were a wonderful read, fantastik.
    [Show full text]
  • Team Biography
    Team Biography Instructions In the Silver Age of comics, readers saw some of their favorite superheroes team up to form the Justice League of America and The Avengers. They also met some new superhero teams like The Fantastic Four and The X-Men. Today there are many superhero teams that exist – or have existed. We’d like you to dig into them a bit more! In this section of the Superhero Dossier, we want to you research an existing team of superheroes. We want to know which heroes make up the team and what strengths and weaknesses they each bring to the table. We also want to know why the team was formed. Was there a new megavillian that they needed to fight? Was there a social issue that one hero couldn’t fight alone? If you want to go the other direction, feel free to pick a team of villains to research! We encourage you to be creative and have fun with this. Look for teams that are lesser known or come from different cultures and genres. If you need some inspiration, you can get started on the following resource: ● Superhero Database When you’re ready, turn to the next page to begin thinking about the characteristics of your team members. Superhero Dossier Archetypes Throughout history there is a series of personality types, archetypes, that are easily found in every form of storytelling. There’s the leader. The playboy. The rebel. The anti-hero. Comic books are no exception to this. Looking for a leader? Superman fits that description.
    [Show full text]
  • Video Resources Feature Films Boiler Room
    Video Resources Feature Films Boiler Room. New Line Cinema, 2000.A college dropout, attempting to win back his father's high standards he gets a job as a broker for a suburban investment firm, which puts him on the fast track to success, but the job might not be as legitimate as it once appeared to be. Margin Call. Before the Door Pictures, 2011. Follows the key people at an investment bank, over a 24- hour period, during the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis. The Wolf of Wall Street. Universal Pictures, 2013. Based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, from his rise to a wealthy stock-broker living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption and the federal government. The Big Short. Paramount Pictures,2015. In 2006-7 a group of investors bet against the US mortgage market. In their research they discover how flawed and corrupt the market is. The Last Days of Lehman Brothers. British Broadcasting Corporation, 2009. After six months' turmoil in the world's financial markets, Lehman Brothers was on life support and the government was about to pull the plug. Documentaries Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Jigsaw Productions, 2005. A documentary about the Enron Corporation, its faulty and corrupt business practices, and how they led to its fall. Inside Job. Sony Pictures Classics, 2010. Takes a closer look at what brought about the 2008 financial meltdown. Too Big to Fail. HBO Films, 2011. Chronicles the financial meltdown of 2008 and centers on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve.
    [Show full text]