The Guardian UK’s Mark Abrahams has some fun with U of I law professor Larry Ribstein‘s monograph “How Movies Created the Financial Crisis.” This is not a hoax, we promise. It’s a real paper, written by a real professor.
The true villains, he reveals, are Hollywood moviemakers. Their films, Ribstein tells us, “created the ‘financial’ crisis by presenting a particular narrative of recent economic woes in which finance played a starring role”. Their motive: to “help audiences accept not only [the movie] Wall Street 2, but also the regulation of hedge funds and the prosecution of financiers.”
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He unmasks the film-makers’ hidden legal strategy — a strategy so deeply rooted in their own psyches that they themselves may not be fully aware of it: “Resentment of business is pervasive … Film-makers have prepared society to treat the crisis as financiers’ handiwork. This view helps shape the legal aftermath of the crisis … Film-makers’ focus on capitalist villains could also help explain why financiers figure so prominently in prosecutions of businesspeople during crackdowns on corporate crime”.
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Ribstein goes on to explain that popular films are largely responsible for the legal actions taken against business executives who might otherwise be seen as admirable citizens. Those who were treated most unfairly, he says, include “Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, of Enron … and financiers Bernie Madoff and Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin”.
It’s well worth your time to read the whole article, as well as the comments.