Call it a harbinger of doom or a necessary wake-up call, but Carmen Lossman’s ingeniously disturbing journey into the dark heart of economic and monetary illusion is a must-see for anyone grappling with the sheer madness of life today.
Economic growth has become the Holy Cow of late post-industrial #capitalism, where – to mix metaphors – the elephant in the room is the way money is created literally out of thin air by a few computer strokes of double-entry book-keeping when a bank advances a loan to a customer on which it expects to make a profit.
Madness
Lossman’s genius in Oeconomia is to pin down in simplified, relatively easily understood statements, the sheer madness of system built on the notion of infinite exponential economic growth in a world of finite #natural resources#.
It’s a challenging subject to bring to life visually, but Lossman manages to build an impelling argument built around computerised diagrams and interviews with masters of the financial universe that include the chief economist at the #European Central Bank#, #Peter Praet#, and leading financial executives at, among others, a German luxury car firm and a bond trading company that manages assets worth trillions of dollars.
Lossman establishes the intimate link between credit and debt; the way in which profit is created; and the political power wielded by private finance that demands profit from increasingly indebted countries.
The secretive nature of so many within this world of smoke and mirrors is reflected in the number of closed doors institutions show Lossman. She gets around refusals to talk on camera by having actors voice transcripts of her – at times – bizarre calls with people who surely should be able to answer simple questions such as «where does profit come from?»
When Praet admits on camera that the bank simply creates money electronically – using the analogy of «printing money» – an off-camera press flunky tries to protest. When he offers his own interpretation of what is sometimes called «quantitative easing» – Praet bats him away, telling him he is talking nonsense. It is a victory for the filmmaker, where the gatekeepers of powerful financial institutions are employed precisely to obfuscate, not to clarify.
The second half
Another financial titan, asked to explain what the end game is in a world where more and more people are in debt while a tiny number of extremely wealthy people become richer and richer, squirms before admitting that the system is unsustainable and that we are «somewhere in the second half of the game» in terms of reaching crisis point.
Among the gleaming skyscrapers and plate glass windows favoured by 21st-century financial barons, there is barely a blade of grass or a glimpse of nature – the wall-to-wall image of a forest inside a fiscal fortress, aside.
It is a victory for the filmmaker, where the gatekeepers of powerful financial institutions are employed precisely to obfuscate, not to clarify.
And this, Lossman hints without stating specifically, is where the ultimate cost lies. In a world chasing illusory wealth, created out of thin air and assigned value by a belief system that could have sprung from a Grimms’ fairy tale, nature – and future generations – are those that will finally pay the actual bill.
Lossman’s film ends on this bleak note, with only a hint of salvation as her computer screen cursor clicks on a folder labeled «Research – Alternatives» just before the credits roll.
For anyone with an ounce of sense, it is clear that without a sustainable alternative to neo-liberal financial and political madness, a painful moment of awakening to reality out of slumber more fitting to Rip Van Winkle is fast approaching.
Oeconomia had its World Premiere at the Berlinale’s Forum program and screens next at CPH:DOX
