:00:00. > :00:13.This programme contains strong language.
:00:14. > :00:19.Derivatives, boiler rooms subsidiaries. Zombie banks. It seems
:00:20. > :00:23.as if people have been speaking a different language ever since the
:00:24. > :00:29.credit crunch, which sounds like a chocolate bar. But it was not sweet.
:00:30. > :00:33.Brokers had been gambling with instruments so complex that no one
:00:34. > :00:40.seemed to understand them. But this much I got. When you alone and money
:00:41. > :00:43.to folks who will never pay it back, -- when you lend money to folks who
:00:44. > :00:51.will never pay it back, there is no money. Millions lost their jobs,
:00:52. > :00:56.trillions famished from the world economy and the story tyrannised our
:00:57. > :01:02.TV screens. But they vanished. Economic had got interesting all
:01:03. > :01:09.right. All too. Writers like me had largely ignored matters financial in
:01:10. > :01:13.boom times but we now had to find a way to contend with complex fiscal
:01:14. > :01:18.theory. That challenge has been taken up across all the arts.
:01:19. > :01:25.Villains in the drama our bankers and hedge fund managers. What is the
:01:26. > :01:31.point of having that many if you never say at! And plots of novels
:01:32. > :01:37.focus on underwater novels and banking regulations. If the price of
:01:38. > :01:42.sugar goes back up it is worth something and you can sell it to
:01:43. > :01:46.make money. If when younger eyes burned economics for an interest in
:01:47. > :01:52.the arts, know the answer interested in economics. We dabble in athletics
:01:53. > :01:58.and rip the cover away from a sector that might have preferred to hide
:01:59. > :02:04.and reputation of donnas, Mike Burks under a rock -- like bugs. I am
:02:05. > :02:17.Lionel Shriver, welcome to my Artsnight.
:02:18. > :02:19.For most of my life, economics was a big bore.
:02:20. > :02:21.Unemployment, inflation and currency market variations put
:02:22. > :02:25.Anyone from the world of money seemed a dreary,
:02:26. > :02:38.I used newspaper business sections to clean my
:02:39. > :02:40.woodstove and I would have used them to line kitty litter trays
:02:41. > :02:47.At 52, I was mobilising my resources to buy my first home.
:02:48. > :02:50.But with the global economy under siege,
:02:51. > :02:58.I could no longer expect the banks to protect my life savings.
:02:59. > :03:01.It was dangerous to trust any bank with a
:03:02. > :03:04.deposit that exceeded the amount guaranteed by the government for
:03:05. > :03:09.It is being called the worst day for Wall Street since
:03:10. > :03:17.Our financial infrastructure had grown unstable,
:03:18. > :03:20.like a Chinese high-rise built with low-grade cement.
:03:21. > :03:23.Now money matters had my attention all right.
:03:24. > :03:36.Money is worth what people feel it is worth.
:03:37. > :03:38.They accept it in exchange for goods and
:03:39. > :03:41.services because they have faith in it.
:03:42. > :03:46.Economics is closer to
:03:47. > :03:48.Without millions of individual citizens
:03:49. > :03:57.believing in a currency, money is coloured paper.
:03:58. > :04:06.I became curious about how other writers have tackled these complex
:04:07. > :04:09.matters. Many in the novel, it's an incredibly important theme in the
:04:10. > :04:16.19th century, Jane Austen was fascinated by it, Charles Dickens,
:04:17. > :04:19.Thackeray, Tolstoy, Balzac you could argue was almost exclusively about
:04:20. > :04:24.money and then it all goes away from the novel and in the 20th century it
:04:25. > :04:28.is as if there was the division between serious novels, it is almost
:04:29. > :04:32.as if they were defined by not being a bad money from Henry James on. It
:04:33. > :04:37.is difficult to understand why it has gone away, it is actually almost
:04:38. > :04:41.easier to understand it has come back. John Lanchester is one of
:04:42. > :04:47.several current authors who explore the themes and play in the of
:04:48. > :04:55.finance. -- at play in the world of finance. His novel Capital was
:04:56. > :05:00.recently adapted for television. We have seen some strange patterns,
:05:01. > :05:04.levels of volatility when we crunch down are not correlated with the
:05:05. > :05:09.underlying movement of our assets. It is looking as if we are moving
:05:10. > :05:13.away from anything we can simulate using historically -based
:05:14. > :05:22.algorithms. And Chester's fiction is informed by his grasp of a complex
:05:23. > :05:29.world. He also writes nonfiction like Had His Big-money. My father
:05:30. > :05:36.worked for a bank. Somethings who are involved in, like the credit
:05:37. > :05:39.crunch, synthetic credit, and things like that, they are just
:05:40. > :05:43.complicated, there is no way round it. But I think there is also a
:05:44. > :05:50.communication gap and it is useful to some of the people on the inside
:05:51. > :05:55.of finance that week, the outsiders, do not necessarily understand. I do
:05:56. > :06:05.think that something has gone seriously badly wrong in the way in
:06:06. > :06:10.which it doesn't serve society, social utility, what it does for us
:06:11. > :06:17.is highly questionable, and a lot of the time actively toxic. Toxic
:06:18. > :06:22.indeed. But how can writers hold bankers to account? This is a
:06:23. > :06:32.question with which Irish author Paul Murray has grappled in his new
:06:33. > :06:39.novel, The Mark And The Void. I felt part of the reason the crash
:06:40. > :06:44.happened, it was so destructive, the arts really had not addressed very
:06:45. > :06:51.fundamental things that were happening in the Western world. This
:06:52. > :06:56.had been in the pipeline for 25 years but the arts had gone, that is
:06:57. > :07:03.the banking world, it is boring, just a bunch of suits. And it is
:07:04. > :07:11.true, because they had this cloak of boring mess over them, books and
:07:12. > :07:14.movies, they kind of ignored this enormous build-up, this collision of
:07:15. > :07:19.power that has been happening in the world of finance. Like very, very
:07:20. > :07:27.reckless use of other peoples money that has going on. So when I sat
:07:28. > :07:30.down to start a new book, I felt, this seems like the most important
:07:31. > :07:37.thing to write about. It seems that if you are not writing about this
:07:38. > :07:42.huge leap in inequality that is happening, then what are you doing?
:07:43. > :07:46.I came to the same conclusion. S instead of writing a novel about the
:07:47. > :07:55.recent past I turned to the near future. Far from being deathly dry,
:07:56. > :07:58.to my surprise, economics has grown apocalyptic. The Mandibles describes
:07:59. > :08:05.not terrifying totalitarian future like George Orwell did but and
:08:06. > :08:12.economic dystopia. The USA in 2029 is burdened by unsustainable social
:08:13. > :08:15.spending and old people like me. -- on old people. The illusion of
:08:16. > :08:20.wealth is that you can buy what you want, he tells them, which it can
:08:21. > :08:25.but only if you want, like, a pretty dress. You don't want address. You
:08:26. > :08:28.want not to be old. Maybe you want to be still a famous writer and you
:08:29. > :08:34.cannot buy that either. There are no more famous writers. You want the
:08:35. > :08:38.thicker hair in your old snapshots. You pretend that you don't but you
:08:39. > :08:44.want people to like you. You want not to get cancer. What threatens
:08:45. > :08:49.everything that is important to you is not currency depreciation or
:08:50. > :08:54.economic collapses your own collapse. Other than being able to
:08:55. > :08:55.pick up a nice bottle of wine or maybe a chicken, you cannot buy
:08:56. > :09:10.anything you want. But it is not only we novelists
:09:11. > :09:16.dabbling in the black arts of finance. The dramatists are getting
:09:17. > :09:21.in on the act too. Lucy Prebble came to prominence with the award-winning
:09:22. > :09:29.2009 play, Enron, which lifted the lid on corporate mismanagement. I
:09:30. > :09:34.don't like taking losses right now. She has been looking at how theatre
:09:35. > :09:43.has sought to demystify what Thomas Carlyle called the dismal science.
:09:44. > :09:46.You know how, in a movie, when the genius starts scribbling
:09:47. > :09:47.equations frantically, trying to solve some
:09:48. > :09:49.unsolvable problem, he always does it on a window.
:09:50. > :09:53.As if he can't possibly find a calculator or even a piece of
:09:54. > :09:55.That's not because great mathematical discoveries happen on
:09:56. > :10:07.It's because the movie is terrified of boring you.
:10:08. > :10:10.But theatre does not need to do any of that
:10:11. > :10:16.In Enron, we made finance entertaining using song and dance
:10:17. > :10:22.numbers, vaudeville, and even light sabre battles.
:10:23. > :10:29.The raptors represented real financial instruments the
:10:30. > :10:41.Back in 2009 the stage was taking aim at those who caused the crisis.
:10:42. > :10:48.So now it is down to theatre a game to look at the effects of the crash,
:10:49. > :10:52.and particularly the effect of austerity. I am at the Almeida
:10:53. > :10:57.Theatre in leafy Islington where they are producing a new play called
:10:58. > :11:03.Boy about a disenfranchised youth called Liam. The play charts the
:11:04. > :11:19.progress of a young boy on a 24-hour odyssey across London. You reckon we
:11:20. > :11:23.all look the same! You're right. It was written by Leo Butler. We
:11:24. > :11:29.started our careers together at the Royal Court. Hello, Leo. I love Boy,
:11:30. > :11:34.I think it is a wonderful play. It made me think of the economy and
:11:35. > :11:40.money and this nothingness at the centre that we all ranging ourselves
:11:41. > :11:43.around. And everyone in the play is under economic pressure, every
:11:44. > :11:50.character you meet and they might be able to deal with it better than us
:11:51. > :11:57.that there is one central figure who has slipped through the net and has
:11:58. > :12:08.no support whatsoever. Have you a valid ticket! Some of us pay our
:12:09. > :12:16.fares. There's no need to be so rough with him. No one is being
:12:17. > :12:26.rough. What is your name? It's only a train ticket. It's Liam. What do
:12:27. > :12:31.you think, in your play, many represents? We all need money to
:12:32. > :12:35.function. And if you don't have it, then you cannot function as a human
:12:36. > :12:40.being. And Liam cannot function as what we know as a human being and
:12:41. > :12:44.even though we can see him on the outside, just a kid wearing a
:12:45. > :12:50.hoodie, or whatever, there is someone there, although he might not
:12:51. > :12:52.realise it himself, someone who is being corroded, emotionally,
:12:53. > :12:59.spiritually, psychologically, because of the absence of economic
:13:00. > :13:05.stability. Social stability. And we do now live in the world, exactly as
:13:06. > :13:12.you say, where just having money gives you access to basic things,
:13:13. > :13:16.not fancy things, being able to use a lavatory, enter premises, you have
:13:17. > :13:22.to pay for something. It is a different environment. Two things
:13:23. > :13:26.audiences find surprisingly, two moments, one where Liam finds it so
:13:27. > :13:30.hard to get from south-east London to Oxford Street. It is a huge jenny
:13:31. > :13:34.because if you don't have the money you cannot get there. He ends up
:13:35. > :13:38.accosted at the train station because he doesn't have a ticket and
:13:39. > :13:44.the other point is when some body drops a chicken box on the floor and
:13:45. > :13:47.he picks it up and it said. You say, you doesn't have any money to even
:13:48. > :13:54.buy a little bit of food. I think people found it quite shocking.
:13:55. > :13:59.What does it feel like to be in an audience at the Al media when there
:14:00. > :14:05.are punters who are millions of miles away from that experience?
:14:06. > :14:09.What effect does that have on them? I think it is great, giving them an
:14:10. > :14:13.experience of seeing the world through someone else's eyes who is
:14:14. > :14:19.from a different financial and social set of circumstances. There
:14:20. > :14:23.are always people that come to the play and don't like it for whatever
:14:24. > :14:30.reason, but the response we have been getting, Liam's experience,
:14:31. > :14:32.even if it is alien to them, they are going into the street, saying
:14:33. > :14:36.they are seeing the world differently. They are looking at
:14:37. > :14:41.kids like him differently and that is all you can ask and I think that
:14:42. > :14:51.is important that the core audience comes to see it. Let me end. Get
:14:52. > :14:56.lost. I've always thought theatre is by far the best art form, to look at
:14:57. > :15:04.issues of money. Because theatre is based on illusion, it is public,
:15:05. > :15:09.social, and it insists that we suspend our disbelief about the
:15:10. > :15:14.blatant use of metaphor in front of us, which is not 1 million miles
:15:15. > :15:19.away from economics. At the heart of many of these plays, universal
:15:20. > :15:26.themes like abuse of power, betrayal and read. The invisible hand opens
:15:27. > :15:33.this week at the tricycle Theatre in Kilburn. You have something of
:15:34. > :15:43.value, do not throw it away. I joined the Pulitzer prize-winning
:15:44. > :15:49.dramatist in rehearsal. We will write to them, to my company, but
:15:50. > :15:53.not after you kidnapped me. Nick uses his knowledge of the financial
:15:54. > :16:03.markets to connect with his captors. What? That does not mean I'm not
:16:04. > :16:09.still worth something. Do you? I have a theory that money is
:16:10. > :16:12.interesting in drama, never because of just money, but because of what
:16:13. > :16:18.the money represents, which is different from story to story, what
:16:19. > :16:22.do you think the money represents in The Invisible Hand? That is a great
:16:23. > :16:28.point, money is the ultimate cipher and it can stand in for power and
:16:29. > :16:33.sexuality and status. The play begins with the notion of money as
:16:34. > :16:40.evil but over the course of the play the corrosion... The corroding power
:16:41. > :16:49.of money begins to affect everybody, liberalism capitalism is a religious
:16:50. > :16:54.and ology. -- analogy. It has the hallmarks of that, a way of seeing
:16:55. > :16:59.the world which is not based on fact, the capacity to move
:17:00. > :17:05.individuals and nations to action. And the sort of occasion of this
:17:06. > :17:11.grand abstraction which we could call God or the economy where
:17:12. > :17:16.individuals performed their daily sacrifice for the well-being of this
:17:17. > :17:21.large abstracts in which we follow and we believe it's well-being is
:17:22. > :17:24.more important. Just because you can't get what you want one way does
:17:25. > :17:32.not mean you can't get it another. I'm listing. -- listening. Just a
:17:33. > :17:40.month ago, I had a meeting with emerging markets at UBS. What is
:17:41. > :17:47.that? Union Bank of Switzerland. Their operation is ten times bigger
:17:48. > :17:50.here in Pakistan than Citibank, I was in talks to go to UBS and they
:17:51. > :18:00.began to pay me a lot more money. How much? Seven figures. For what?
:18:01. > :18:09.Serin greedy Pakistani 's how to Rob their own people? -- showing. I'm
:18:10. > :18:17.worth a lot more to you. I engineered a trade which made $20
:18:18. > :18:25.million. Do you have a background in finance? My dad when I first moved
:18:26. > :18:34.to New York in my early 20s, he said if you read the Wall Street Journal
:18:35. > :18:38.every day I will pay your rent. I did not go into finance, but I ended
:18:39. > :18:42.up learning a lot about it. I have been following it ever since. When
:18:43. > :18:48.you are dealing with such complex ideas, how do you as a writer
:18:49. > :18:51.managed to work in a way which means an audience member who knows nothing
:18:52. > :18:57.about the subject will understand it? My approach is a writer is that
:18:58. > :19:01.audiences will respond and as long as they understand on a human level
:19:02. > :19:06.what they are seeing, two characters, one is trying to take
:19:07. > :19:10.something from the other or one is trying to hide something or one is
:19:11. > :19:14.trying to enlist the help, as long as the core actions are clear, the
:19:15. > :19:18.audience will follow, and if they don't understand certain things,
:19:19. > :19:25.they are OK with that. I recognised a difference in the prices of wheat.
:19:26. > :19:27.It was pretty drastic, nothing to do with agriculture, just an
:19:28. > :19:34.abnormality in the distribution and when I was in understanding of it I
:19:35. > :19:43.was able to take advantage of by creating instrument for people to
:19:44. > :19:49.use in Pakistan. An instrument? Do you feel a connection with Nick, the
:19:50. > :20:02.kidnapped banker, in your play? There is a lot of money concerns at
:20:03. > :20:10.the moment, money is not amoral. It is on us to make capital work. It is
:20:11. > :20:16.not on capital. Nick is really just a member of that amoral class. He is
:20:17. > :20:18.not an immoral person, but he functions in accordance with the
:20:19. > :20:26.rules of capital which are not human. I don't like you and I will
:20:27. > :20:34.never like you, you are a heartless greedy person and I think the likes
:20:35. > :20:40.of you are better off dead. Why are The Invisible Hand and others on
:20:41. > :20:44.stage? These plays wrestle with the human themes under the numbers and
:20:45. > :20:47.although they can't provide all the answers, theatre is still for me the
:20:48. > :21:03.best way of holding money to account.
:21:04. > :21:13.It is 8am, and the London stock exchange has added a touch of
:21:14. > :21:16.glamour this morning. Damian Lewis is not only opening trading but is
:21:17. > :21:23.here to launches new TV series which has been a major success in the USA.
:21:24. > :21:27.Billions would have been unimaginable 44 2008, a hit show
:21:28. > :21:41.about the regulation of the market. -- unimaginable before 2008. If they
:21:42. > :21:49.pull their 1.2 billion, it could go public. We have got to keep it low
:21:50. > :21:55.key. Who is more low-key than me? Did you have a very strong reaction
:21:56. > :22:00.to the near fiscal collapse in 2008 yourself? Yes, and that is the
:22:01. > :22:06.reason I'm doing Billions, directly as a result of that. My investments
:22:07. > :22:11.went down 30% in the space of 30 days, that was a concern. I don't
:22:12. > :22:17.have as many as people in a building like this, but I had some of my
:22:18. > :22:25.children's education in it. I wanted to know what had happened and why
:22:26. > :22:28.seemingly these CEOs of the big banks and the FTSE 100 companies did
:22:29. > :22:32.not know what had happened and even more worryingly that people did not
:22:33. > :22:36.seem to know the names of the instruments which had been developed
:22:37. > :22:42.in order to make these bets. Not even the names, much less what they
:22:43. > :22:49.were. What they did, what they were, no one clearly knew what a directive
:22:50. > :22:56.was and how far it could be derived from its original source, deep into
:22:57. > :23:07.the maze. Infinitely. That is why I think Billions is timely. It is part
:23:08. > :23:17.of a trend which includes The Big Short, too big to fail, and of
:23:18. > :23:24.course the Walford Wall Street. -- Wolf of Wall Street. This latest
:23:25. > :23:27.offering pits a charismatic but on sleepless hedge fund manager against
:23:28. > :23:35.a crusading yet conflicted US attorney. You know about? Your daddy
:23:36. > :23:43.has a little place out there, he must let you use the bedroom some
:23:44. > :23:52.weekends. Walk away. I should. The viewer is likely to be torn? Yes,
:23:53. > :24:01.I've already had... Who the viewer wants to win? Yes, to destroy the
:24:02. > :24:07.other man, how far will they go? Do you find this world exciting? Yeah,
:24:08. > :24:17.I do. Does that surprise you? No, no. I actually think it is
:24:18. > :24:23.fascinating. The breadth of knowledge of many of the people that
:24:24. > :24:28.work in this world is to be admired. They directly dialled in to what
:24:29. > :24:35.makes the world go around as they tap numbers into screens and either
:24:36. > :24:40.make or lose hundreds of millions of pounds each day. This is a show
:24:41. > :24:47.which wants to explore the financial world, the nature of ambition and
:24:48. > :24:54.the nature of regulation or no regulation and I think that is the
:24:55. > :24:58.core at the heart of the story. Drama may rely on fictional heroes
:24:59. > :25:02.but the financial world has produced some real if unlikely heroes, as
:25:03. > :25:06.well. Next month Netflix will launch
:25:07. > :25:08.a new documentary which describes long history of economic crises
:25:09. > :25:12.from which we have never learned. This film is about the Achilles
:25:13. > :25:15.heel of capitalism. How human nature drives the economy
:25:16. > :25:17.to crisis after crisis Presented by Monty
:25:18. > :25:28.Python's Terry Jones, of distinguished economists,
:25:29. > :25:33.one of whom saw it all coming. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s,
:25:34. > :25:36.the economist Hyman Minsky proposed the financial
:25:37. > :25:41.instability hypothesis. For someone to write about financial
:25:42. > :25:44.instability in the late This is a period, at least
:25:45. > :25:50.on the surface, which was the most financially stable period
:25:51. > :25:53.the United States had ever had. And so it did not seem
:25:54. > :25:57.like what he was saying was relevant But the producers have found a novel
:25:58. > :26:19.way to resurrect his voice. So, Hyman, first thing,
:26:20. > :26:21.why do you think your predictions of a financial crisis went
:26:22. > :26:27.unheeded for so long? It is comforting to think
:26:28. > :26:31.that the market will always tend towards equilibrium but it simply
:26:32. > :26:33.is not true. But it is uncomfortable
:26:34. > :26:44.for politicians looking to secure votes or placate bankers, to admit
:26:45. > :26:47.that they are on the precipice Hyman Minsky's is a bubbles
:26:48. > :26:52.in three stages. The hedge participants
:26:53. > :26:58.are first in line. # What they say will make our debt
:26:59. > :27:01.pays the interest on their debt # The second stage
:27:02. > :27:06.involves some speculation # Speculators borrow
:27:07. > :27:11.cash to buy more shares # And as long as the market rises
:27:12. > :27:14.there are no nasty surprises # But when it falls it
:27:15. > :27:17.takes them unawares #. Hyman, I have to ask,
:27:18. > :27:26.what happens next? I can only imagine that the circle
:27:27. > :27:28.of financial instability will start all over again,
:27:29. > :27:31.as the market appears to stabilise, people will become more confident
:27:32. > :27:34.and begin to take bigger risks, no matter what measures
:27:35. > :27:35.are put in place. The neoclassical economics model
:27:36. > :28:07.will eventually trigger another And now I must bid you farewell. I
:28:08. > :28:11.hope you've enjoyed our Artsnight. To play us out, here's a number from
:28:12. > :28:17.Boom Bust Boom. # Where forever blowing Bubbles,
:28:18. > :28:20.pretty bubbles in the air # They fly so high, nearly reached
:28:21. > :28:26.the sky # Then like my dreams they fade and
:28:27. > :28:32.die # Fortune is always hiding, we've
:28:33. > :28:43.looked everywhere # Where forever blowing Bubbles
:28:44. > :28:52.# Pretty bubbles in the air # We are forever blowing Bubbles,
:28:53. > :28:59.pretty bubbles in the air # Pretty bubbles in the air
:29:00. > :29:03.#.