Revista Umělec 2009/2 >> Let´s make money - the film about the crisis Lista de todas las ediciones
Let´s make   money -   the film about the crisis
Revista Umělec
Año 2009, 2
6,50 EUR
7 USD
Enviar la edición impresa:
Suscripción de orden

Let´s make money - the film about the crisis

Revista Umělec 2009/2

01.02.2009

Clemens Foschi | essay | en cs de

Erwin Wagenhofer’s Let’s Make Money is a film about the financial crisis that takes a look at the conduct and consequences of worldwide financial transactions. The film came out in September, a successor to his previous documentary We Feed the World, which focused on the globalization of food production.
After three years of research around the globe, Wagenhofer returns to reveal capitalism’s unfettered power and predatory global practices, now normal everyday occurrences in the finance world—a hair-raising reality. This is shown in contrast to the world of the underdog, the majority of the world’s population. And the environment, of course.
Just as in his previous film, the message he drives home is that we are all part of the problem. Wagenhofer does with us in the theatre what the market does with us in reality. We’re in the midst of the action—whether we want to be or not. It doesn’t matter if you’re a bank account holder, private pension plan holder or a hobby trader. Capital is injected into the global finance system and it runs its course.
The director hangs back and relies upon the impact of photos and testimonies of experts. He interviews bankers and construction workers, farmers and real estate agents, whom he encourages to speak without a filter. He thereby expresses his views through the rhythm of the film cuts and through brief sound bytes. It works. The photos are strongly effective and extremely evocative.
There are thousands of examples of this system’s consequences. In developing countries, as well as in Europe, working conditions have been steadily
declining for years to the great benefit of share-holder values. The open cynicism presented by finance gurus is also surprising. In the film, the president of Templeton Emerging Markets declares “The best time to buy shares is when blood is sticking to the street.”
With the help of World Bank credit, Burkina Faso’s cotton monoculture industry produces cotton for low wages for the world market. The consequences are increasing ground erosion and minimal economic prospects due to the small profit margin. The gold mines in Ghana, also established with World Bank support, are another example. Exactly 3% of the profits stay in the country while the miners work for the lowest of wages and put their health on the line.
The film does not spare Europe: we fly soundlessly in a helicopter over a deserted, concrete jungle of slowly rotting vacation homes along the coast of Spain. A “cement tsunami” has swallowed the last of the natural beauty. Investments… The profit rate for real estate companies and banks: a whopping 20%. Three million empty houses and 800 golf courses erected in the desert use as much water as a city of 16 million inhabitants. Maintenance and eventual razing costs fall on taxpayers.
But the film doesn’t make the mechanism of the unregulated system perfectly clear. It pictorially conveys the consequences while its success at the box office shows the level of people’s interest today. It’s up to the viewer to decide what they take away from the documentary.
As everyone has known since the outbreak of the crisis, not even the banks knew the details of their portfolios. How should private investors grasp the evermore complex structure of the capital market? They also strive for higher yields at the lowest possible risk. Fund brochures offer relatively little information about yields. But everyone knows someone who knows someone who was able to double his investment on the stock market in two years. How can you pass up a work-free income? So you take your money to the bank and let yourself be talked into a commodities certificate, biotech shares or monthly payments into a (state-funded) private pension by a generally clueless bank employee.
And you’re already playing along.
The evil manifests itself through the quest for maximum yields. This abstract mechanism causes financial pressure, which results in sinking costs of labor and the exploitation of resources and human capital. The Invisible Hand, as Adam Smith would have described, doesn’t take into account social or ecological conditions. Capital is collected from the Haves, free from racism and prejudices, and determines the scenarios and the working conditions of the have-nots. Market regulation would best be handled by the state or, better yet, supranational organizations. The collapse of the bull market impacted “only” losers of globalization—roughly 80% of the world’s population. The film makes this very clear.
And now the impact is upon us. Fear of long-term recession, rising unemployment and bankrupt states is widespread. State rescue efforts focus on crippled banking systems. This seems to be essential to guarantee functioning economies. Those who caused the crisis will be rescued using taxpayer money. This may at least result in the opportunity to control banks and finally establish internationally binding regulations for financial markets. But the approach remains focused on national rescue packages without substantial conditions for the affected institutes and markets. This said, the announcement of a bailout of 18 billion dollars for Wall Street bankers for 2008 was announced January 30, 2009.
Let’s make money!





Comentarios

Actualmente no hay comentarios

Agregar nuevo comentario

Artículos recomendados

An unsuccessful co-production An unsuccessful co-production
If you know your way around, you might discover that every month and maybe even every week you stand the chance to receive money for your cultural project. Successful applicants have enough money, average applicants have enough to keep their mouths shut, and the unsuccessful ones are kept in check by the chance that they might get lucky in the future. One natural result has been the emergence of…
Terminator vs. Avatar: Notes on Accelerationism Terminator vs. Avatar: Notes on Accelerationism
Why political intellectuals, do you incline towards the proletariat? In commiseration for what? I realize that a proletarian would hate you, you have no hatred because you are bourgeois, privileged, smooth-skinned types, but also because you dare not say that the only important thing there is to say, that one can enjoy swallowing the shit of capital, its materials, its metal bars, its polystyrene…
Malvado Malvado
“La persona debe sacudir tres veces la mano de alguien mientras mantiene fijamente la mirada en sus ojos. Así es como es posible memorizar el nombre de una persona con certeza. De ésta forma es como he recordado los nombres de las 5000 personas que han estado en el Horse Hospital”, me dijo Jim Holland. Holland es un experimentado cineasta, músico y curador. En su infancia, sufrió al pasar por…
Contents 2016/1 Contents 2016/1
Contents of the new issue.
04.02.2020 10:17
¿A dónde ir ahora?
fuera
S.d.Ch, Solitarios y Cultura Periférica   (una generación nacida alrededor de 1970)
S.d.Ch, Solitarios y Cultura Periférica (una generación nacida alrededor de 1970)
Josef Jindrák
¿Quién es S.d.Ch? Una persona de muchos intereses –activa en varios campos- la literatura, el teatro, conocida por sus cómics y sus collages en los campos del arte. Un poeta y dramaturgo principalmente. Un solitario por naturaleza y determinación, su trabajo no se encajona en las corrientes actuales. Siempre antepone la enunciación personal, incluso cuando su estructura interna puede volverse…
Leer más...
fuera
Revista THC: Revisitando el Condenado Pasado
Revista THC: Revisitando el Condenado Pasado
Ivan Mečl
¡Somos el quinto partido político global! Pítr Dragota ys Viki Shock, Fragmenty geniality / Fragmentos de carisma, mayo y junio de 1997. Cuando Viki llegó de visita, fue solamente para mostrarme algunos dibujos y collages. Sólo como un pensamiento tardío me mostró la publicación checa de finales de los noventa, THC Review. Cuando vio cuánto me fascinaba, le entró el pánico e insistió que…
Leer más...
prize
To hen kai pán (Jindřich Chalupecký Prize Laureate 1998 Jiří Černický)
To hen kai pán (Jindřich Chalupecký Prize Laureate 1998 Jiří Černický)
Leer más...
Dolores de parto
¿A quién le asusta la maternidad?
¿A quién le asusta la maternidad?
Zuzana Štefková
La pluralización de las definiciones de “madre“ es, a un tiempo, un lugar de represión recrudecida y de liberación potencial. (1) Carol Stabile Corría el año 2003 y una mujer en avanzado estado de embarazo estaba de pie al borde del camino en el matorral del bosque Lapák de Kladno. En el marco de la exposición Artistas en el bosque, los transeúntes podían vislumbrar el destello de su vientre…
Leer más...
Libros, video, ediciones y obras de arte que podrían interesarle Ir a la tienda virtual
S.d.Ch.: Varlén's Pantheon, 99,5 x 69 cm, collage and drawing
Más información...
900 EUR
969 USD
Limited edition of 10. Size 100 x 70 cm. Black print on durable white foil.
Más información...
75 EUR
81 USD
Más información...
6,50 EUR
7 USD
1997, 50.8 x 76.2 cm, Painting on Card
Más información...
2 226 EUR
2 398 USD

Studio

Divus and its services

Studio Divus designs and develops your ideas for projects, presentations or entire PR packages using all sorts of visual means and media. We offer our clients complete solutions as well as all the individual steps along the way. In our work we bring together the most up-to-date and classic technologies, enabling us to produce a wide range of products. But we do more than just prints and digital projects, ad materials, posters, catalogues, books, the production of screen and space presentations in interiors or exteriors, digital work and image publication on the internet; we also produce digital films—including the editing, sound and 3-D effects—and we use this technology for web pages and for company presentations. We specialize in ...
 

Cita del día El editor no se responsabiliza por los estados físicos o mentales que puedan generarse después de leer la cita

Enlightenment is always late.
Contacto e información del visitante Contactos de la redacción

DIVUS
NOVÁ PERLA
Kyjov 36-37, 407 47 Krásná Lípa
Čzech Republic

 

GALLERY
perla@divus.cz, +420 222 264 830, +420 606 606 425
open from Wednesday to Sunday between 10am to 6pm
and on appointment.

 

CAFÉ & BOOKSHOP
shop@divus.cz, +420 222 264 830, +420 606 606 425
open from Wednesday to Sunday between 10am to 10pm
and on appointment.

 

STUDO & PRINTING
studio@divus.cz, +420 222 264 830, +420 602 269 888
open from Monday to Friday between 10am to 6pm

 

DIVUS PUBLISHING
Ivan Mečl, ivan@divus.cz, +420 602 269 888

 

UMĚLEC MAGAZINE
Palo Fabuš, umelec@divus.cz

DIVUS LONDON
Arch 8, Resolution Way, Deptford
London SE8 4NT, United Kingdom

news@divus.org.uk, +44 (0) 7526 902 082

 

DIVUS BERLIN
berlin@divus.cz


DIVUS WIEN
wien@divus.cz


DIVUS MEXICO CITY
mexico@divus.cz


DIVUS BARCELONA
barcelona@divus.cz

DIVUS MOSCOW & MINSK
alena@divus.cz

SUSCRIPCIÓN AL NEWSLETTER DE DIVUS
Divus We Are Rising National Gallery For You! Go to Kyjov by Krásná Lípa no.37.