What the movies teach us about recessions, memestocks and gold

0:01NPR.

0:12Sierra Juarez:This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrian Ma. And I'm Wailin Wong. And today we are going to the movies. That is right. Recently we were asked to go on NPR's news program, All Things Considered, to talk about our favorite films about business and economics. We come to this place for learning, Adrian. Somehow, getting incredibly nerdy just feels right in a place like this. Cinema. If you are hungry for more econ-tinged entertainment, we have Rex. This conversation is hosted by our colleague Rob Schmitz, and after the break, he takes it from there.

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1:50Sierra Juarez:Built for you. Dell.com slash Dell PCs. Even for those who don't know a thing about business or finance, that has not stopped Hollywood from trying to teach us what it takes to make millions. But how do these movies go down with people who actually cover business and finance for a living? So, Waylon, I'm going to start with you. You've covered business, finance, and the economy for years, and I hear you are a big movie fan. What are your favorite films in this genre? OK, I know everyone's expecting me to say like trading places, but I'm going to zag. I'm going to say The Insider. This is from 1999.

2:31Michael Mann movies starring Russell Crowe, Al Pacino.

2:35Sierra Juarez:You go public and 30 million people hear what you got to say. Nothing. I mean, nothing will ever be the same again. It is about corporate whistleblowing. It's about big tobacco. It's about journalism and the intersection of big corporate interests, politics and media. And it's a true story. It really happened in the 90s. The other movie I will throw in here is It's a Wonderful Life. This is your classic Frank Capra movie about George Bailey. You see, George, you really had a wonderful life. And actually, econ professors talk about this movie in class because George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart, he works at a building and loan, which is similar to a bank.

3:16And there's an iconic scene in the movie where there is a classic bank run. So it's one of like the most famous depictions of a bank run. And then when George gives that famous speech about, oh, I can't give you your money back because it's in so-and-so's house and so-and-so's house.

3:31Sierra Juarez:You're thinking of this place all wrong as if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not here. Well, your money's in Joe's house. That's right next to yours. He's actually explaining something called fractional reserve banking, which is fundamental about how our financial system works. Even if you don't know, that's happening to you. Okay, Adrian, let's turn to you. Well, one of them is definitely The Big Short. Love The Big Short. And for folks who haven't seen it, it's basically a dramatization of the 2008 financial crisis, like people who were players in it, the dynamics that led to it, the sort of financial chicanery that triggered this whole debacle.

4:11Sierra Juarez:You're saying that at 8%, the bonds fail, and we are already at 4 %? That's right. If they go to 8%, it's Armageddon. Yeah, that's right. And the sort of non-traumatized counterpart that I would pair with it is Inside Job, which is a documentary about the 2008 financial crisis. Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, they knew what was happening. And what I love about both of these movies is they take something that was just so horrendously complex. You know, the financial regulations and the mortgage bubble and mortgage-backed securities. Collateralized debt obligations. Credit default swaps.

4:49Sierra Juarez:All this sort of like jumble of financial jargon. And they actually make it make sense. Oh my gosh. You guys are giving me flashbacks. This is like PTSD. You know, we're naming all of our favorite films in this genre. What are some of the common threads from these films that makes them so good? I think there's a lot of news and entertainment that's either like we're going to be nerdy or we're going to be fun. But somehow they managed to do both. And it kind of reminds me of a thing that like the Planet Money executive producer Alex Goldmark has said about Planet Money, which is like our show is basically two facts plus jazz hands.

5:28Right.

5:29Sierra Juarez:And these these movies, the big short inside job are so factual and so nerdy. But then it's like jazz hands, you know, and they just like they make you laugh. They surprise you and they keep you engrossed in the action. Waylon, how about for you? I think that a lot of the way that money works, especially today, is the opposite of cinematic, right? We no longer have open pit trading where people are running around a trading floor yelling and waving their arms around and, you know, throwing ticker tape around hysterically. And so now that it's just a bunch of people sitting at their computers or at a Bloomberg terminal clicking around, that's actually incredibly boring.

6:10And it's just not visually interesting. So I think that the best movies about money don't sweat the details so much about the technical nuances of exactly how trading works. So I think you really have to focus in on characters and on some more kind of fundamental human stuff that makes a movie tick.

6:30Sierra Juarez:If you're going to tell someone who thinks, hey, I'm just not interested in business stories or Wall Street or any of this stuff, what movies would you point them to get them maybe into these types of topics, Waylon? Okay, I have like a non-serious suggestion and then a serious suggestion. My serious suggestion is the movie Dumb Money, which came out just a few years ago. Yo, what up, everybody? Roaring Kitty here. I'm going to pick a stock and talk about why I think it's interesting. And that stock is GameStop. It's about the whole GameStop situation when you had all these people on Wall Street Bets, the Reddit subreddit, you know, who was trying to bring down a bunch of hedge funds that were going short on the company GameStop.

7:16Wait, that's your serious film? That's like my serious answer because it's actually about, you know, like a business in Wall Street.

7:22Sierra Juarez:I didn't actually sound that serious. Okay, so what is your fun film? My non-serious suggestion is Die Hard with a Vengeance. You should have seen it coming a mile away. This was never about revenge. It was about a damn heist. Jeremy Irons is trying to steal the gold from the vault at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City because did you know that foreign governments store their gold reserves at the Federal Reserve? So that's an economics movie. Excellent. Wow. Thank you so much. Jeremy Irons stealing everyone's gold. Adrian, how about you? I guess I'll follow Wayland's example and do a non-serious example.

8:03Sierra Juarez:My non-serious suggestion is this documentary, Brandy Hellville. Oh, man. Which is about a fast fashion brand. I heard about Brandy first when I was in seventh grade. Everyone was wearing it at school. I walked into the store and I bought the star necklace. I felt so cool and accepted. I'm not a fashionable person and I'm not like the age demographic of the Brandy Melville brand. But it really opened my eyes to just how kind of bent the fast fashion industry is in terms of its economic and environmental impact. The other one I'm going to say is a documentary called American Factory, which is...

8:45Sierra Juarez:Yes, I've seen that. That's fantastic. They refer to us as foreigners. People just want, they want to feel like they're in America working. Not like when they walk in the door that they've left America and they're now in China. It's about a factory that used to be a General Motors plant. It closed down in 2008. And then a couple of years later, a Chinese company called Fuya, which makes glass, buys the facility. They open it back up. And now it's a facility run with Chinese managers and American assembly line workers. And it's a really fascinating portrait into the people at different levels of the company, how they are dealing with this change.

9:24Sierra Juarez:the sort of conflicting feelings of like, well, some are glad to have a job, but there's some cultural clash. And I think both of these movies, they sort of get at the idea that business is more than just money and numbers. It is like literally the fabric of our lives and livelihoods. Thank you for talking Econ Movies with us, Rob Schmitz. And thanks to Weekend All Things Consider, producer Mark Rivers and editor Adam Rainey. This episode was produced by Angel Correras and engineered by Jimmy Keeley. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kiki Cannon is our editor, and The Indicator is a production of NPR.

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