Lionel Shriver Artsnight

This programme contains strong language.

Derivatives, boiler rooms subsidiaries. Zombie banks. It seems

as if people have been speaking a different language ever since the

credit crunch, which sounds like a chocolate bar. But it was not sweet.

Brokers had been gambling with instruments so complex that no one

seemed to understand them. But this much I got. When you alone and money

to folks who will never pay it back, -- when you lend money to folks who

will never pay it back, there is no money. Millions lost their jobs,

trillions famished from the world economy and the story tyrannised our

TV screens. But they vanished. Economic had got interesting all

right. All too. Writers like me had largely ignored matters financial in

boom times but we now had to find a way to contend with complex fiscal

theory. That challenge has been taken up across all the arts.

Villains in the drama our bankers and hedge fund managers. What is the

point of having that many if you never say at! And plots of novels

focus on underwater novels and banking regulations. If the price of

sugar goes back up it is worth something and you can sell it to

make money. If when younger eyes burned economics for an interest in

the arts, know the answer interested in economics. We dabble in athletics

and rip the cover away from a sector that might have preferred to hide

and reputation of donnas, Mike Burks under a rock -- like bugs. I am

Lionel Shriver, welcome to my Artsnight.

For most of my life, economics was a big bore.

Unemployment, inflation and currency market variations put

Anyone from the world of money seemed a dreary,

I used newspaper business sections to clean my

woodstove and I would have used them to line kitty litter trays

At 52, I was mobilising my resources to buy my first home.

But with the global economy under siege,

I could no longer expect the banks to protect my life savings.

It was dangerous to trust any bank with a

deposit that exceeded the amount guaranteed by the government for

It is being called the worst day for Wall Street since

Our financial infrastructure had grown unstable,

like a Chinese high-rise built with low-grade cement.

Now money matters had my attention all right.

Money is worth what people feel it is worth.

They accept it in exchange for goods and

services because they have faith in it.

Economics is closer to

Without millions of individual citizens

believing in a currency, money is coloured paper.

I became curious about how other writers have tackled these complex

matters. Many in the novel, it's an incredibly important theme in the

19th century, Jane Austen was fascinated by it, Charles Dickens,

Thackeray, Tolstoy, Balzac you could argue was almost exclusively about

money and then it all goes away from the novel and in the 20th century it

is as if there was the division between serious novels, it is almost

as if they were defined by not being a bad money from Henry James on. It

is difficult to understand why it has gone away, it is actually almost

easier to understand it has come back. John Lanchester is one of

several current authors who explore the themes and play in the of

finance. -- at play in the world of finance. His novel Capital was

recently adapted for television. We have seen some strange patterns,

levels of volatility when we crunch down are not correlated with the

underlying movement of our assets. It is looking as if we are moving

away from anything we can simulate using historically -based

algorithms. And Chester's fiction is informed by his grasp of a complex

world. He also writes nonfiction like Had His Big-money. My father

worked for a bank. Somethings who are involved in, like the credit

crunch, synthetic credit, and things like that, they are just

complicated, there is no way round it. But I think there is also a

communication gap and it is useful to some of the people on the inside

of finance that week, the outsiders, do not necessarily understand. I do

think that something has gone seriously badly wrong in the way in

which it doesn't serve society, social utility, what it does for us

is highly questionable, and a lot of the time actively toxic. Toxic

indeed. But how can writers hold bankers to account? This is a

question with which Irish author Paul Murray has grappled in his new

novel, The Mark And The Void. I felt part of the reason the crash

happened, it was so destructive, the arts really had not addressed very

fundamental things that were happening in the Western world. This

had been in the pipeline for 25 years but the arts had gone, that is

the banking world, it is boring, just a bunch of suits. And it is

true, because they had this cloak of boring mess over them, books and

movies, they kind of ignored this enormous build-up, this collision of

power that has been happening in the world of finance. Like very, very

reckless use of other peoples money that has going on. So when I sat

down to start a new book, I felt, this seems like the most important

thing to write about. It seems that if you are not writing about this

huge leap in inequality that is happening, then what are you doing?

I came to the same conclusion. S instead of writing a novel about the

recent past I turned to the near future. Far from being deathly dry,

to my surprise, economics has grown apocalyptic. The Mandibles describes

not terrifying totalitarian future like George Orwell did but and

economic dystopia. The USA in 2029 is burdened by unsustainable social

spending and old people like me. -- on old people. The illusion of

wealth is that you can buy what you want, he tells them, which it can

but only if you want, like, a pretty dress. You don't want address. You

want not to be old. Maybe you want to be still a famous writer and you

cannot buy that either. There are no more famous writers. You want the

thicker hair in your old snapshots. You pretend that you don't but you

want people to like you. You want not to get cancer. What threatens

everything that is important to you is not currency depreciation or

economic collapses your own collapse. Other than being able to

pick up a nice bottle of wine or maybe a chicken, you cannot buy

anything you want. But it is not only we novelists

dabbling in the black arts of finance. The dramatists are getting

in on the act too. Lucy Prebble came to prominence with the award-winning

2009 play, Enron, which lifted the lid on corporate mismanagement. I

don't like taking losses right now. She has been looking at how theatre

has sought to demystify what Thomas Carlyle called the dismal science.

You know how, in a movie, when the genius starts scribbling

equations frantically, trying to solve some

unsolvable problem, he always does it on a window.

As if he can't possibly find a calculator or even a piece of

That's not because great mathematical discoveries happen on

It's because the movie is terrified of boring you.

But theatre does not need to do any of that

In Enron, we made finance entertaining using song and dance

numbers, vaudeville, and even light sabre battles.

The raptors represented real financial instruments the

Back in 2009 the stage was taking aim at those who caused the crisis.

So now it is down to theatre a game to look at the effects of the crash,

and particularly the effect of austerity. I am at the Almeida

Theatre in leafy Islington where they are producing a new play called

Boy about a disenfranchised youth called Liam. The play charts the

progress of a young boy on a 24-hour odyssey across London. You reckon we

all look the same! You're right. It was written by Leo Butler. We

started our careers together at the Royal Court. Hello, Leo. I love Boy,

I think it is a wonderful play. It made me think of the economy and

money and this nothingness at the centre that we all ranging ourselves

around. And everyone in the play is under economic pressure, every

character you meet and they might be able to deal with it better than us

that there is one central figure who has slipped through the net and has

no support whatsoever. Have you a valid ticket! Some of us pay our

fares. There's no need to be so rough with him. No one is being

rough. What is your name? It's only a train ticket. It's Liam. What do

you think, in your play, many represents? We all need money to

function. And if you don't have it, then you cannot function as a human

being. And Liam cannot function as what we know as a human being and

even though we can see him on the outside, just a kid wearing a

hoodie, or whatever, there is someone there, although he might not

realise it himself, someone who is being corroded, emotionally,

spiritually, psychologically, because of the absence of economic

stability. Social stability. And we do now live in the world, exactly as

you say, where just having money gives you access to basic things,

not fancy things, being able to use a lavatory, enter premises, you have

to pay for something. It is a different environment. Two things

audiences find surprisingly, two moments, one where Liam finds it so

hard to get from south-east London to Oxford Street. It is a huge jenny

because if you don't have the money you cannot get there. He ends up

accosted at the train station because he doesn't have a ticket and

the other point is when some body drops a chicken box on the floor and

he picks it up and it said. You say, you doesn't have any money to even

buy a little bit of food. I think people found it quite shocking.

What does it feel like to be in an audience at the Al media when there

are punters who are millions of miles away from that experience?

What effect does that have on them? I think it is great, giving them an

experience of seeing the world through someone else's eyes who is

from a different financial and social set of circumstances. There

are always people that come to the play and don't like it for whatever

reason, but the response we have been getting, Liam's experience,

even if it is alien to them, they are going into the street, saying

they are seeing the world differently. They are looking at

kids like him differently and that is all you can ask and I think that

is important that the core audience comes to see it. Let me end. Get

lost. I've always thought theatre is by far the best art form, to look at

issues of money. Because theatre is based on illusion, it is public,

social, and it insists that we suspend our disbelief about the

blatant use of metaphor in front of us, which is not 1 million miles

away from economics. At the heart of many of these plays, universal

themes like abuse of power, betrayal and read. The invisible hand opens

this week at the tricycle Theatre in Kilburn. You have something of

value, do not throw it away. I joined the Pulitzer prize-winning

dramatist in rehearsal. We will write to them, to my company, but

not after you kidnapped me. Nick uses his knowledge of the financial

markets to connect with his captors. What? That does not mean I'm not

still worth something. Do you? I have a theory that money is

interesting in drama, never because of just money, but because of what

the money represents, which is different from story to story, what

do you think the money represents in The Invisible Hand? That is a great

point, money is the ultimate cipher and it can stand in for power and

sexuality and status. The play begins with the notion of money as

evil but over the course of the play the corrosion... The corroding power

of money begins to affect everybody, liberalism capitalism is a religious

and ology. -- analogy. It has the hallmarks of that, a way of seeing

the world which is not based on fact, the capacity to move

individuals and nations to action. And the sort of occasion of this

grand abstraction which we could call God or the economy where

individuals performed their daily sacrifice for the well-being of this

large abstracts in which we follow and we believe it's well-being is

more important. Just because you can't get what you want one way does

not mean you can't get it another. I'm listing. -- listening. Just a

month ago, I had a meeting with emerging markets at UBS. What is

that? Union Bank of Switzerland. Their operation is ten times bigger

here in Pakistan than Citibank, I was in talks to go to UBS and they

began to pay me a lot more money. How much? Seven figures. For what?

Serin greedy Pakistani 's how to Rob their own people? -- showing. I'm

worth a lot more to you. I engineered a trade which made $20

million. Do you have a background in finance? My dad when I first moved

to New York in my early 20s, he said if you read the Wall Street Journal

every day I will pay your rent. I did not go into finance, but I ended

up learning a lot about it. I have been following it ever since. When

you are dealing with such complex ideas, how do you as a writer

managed to work in a way which means an audience member who knows nothing

about the subject will understand it? My approach is a writer is that

audiences will respond and as long as they understand on a human level

what they are seeing, two characters, one is trying to take

something from the other or one is trying to hide something or one is

trying to enlist the help, as long as the core actions are clear, the

audience will follow, and if they don't understand certain things,

they are OK with that. I recognised a difference in the prices of wheat.

It was pretty drastic, nothing to do with agriculture, just an

abnormality in the distribution and when I was in understanding of it I

was able to take advantage of by creating instrument for people to

use in Pakistan. An instrument? Do you feel a connection with Nick, the

kidnapped banker, in your play? There is a lot of money concerns at

the moment, money is not amoral. It is on us to make capital work. It is

not on capital. Nick is really just a member of that amoral class. He is

not an immoral person, but he functions in accordance with the

rules of capital which are not human. I don't like you and I will

never like you, you are a heartless greedy person and I think the likes

of you are better off dead. Why are The Invisible Hand and others on

stage? These plays wrestle with the human themes under the numbers and

although they can't provide all the answers, theatre is still for me the

best way of holding money to account.

It is 8am, and the London stock exchange has added a touch of

glamour this morning. Damian Lewis is not only opening trading but is

here to launches new TV series which has been a major success in the USA.

Billions would have been unimaginable 44 2008, a hit show

about the regulation of the market. -- unimaginable before 2008. If they

pull their 1.2 billion, it could go public. We have got to keep it low

key. Who is more low-key than me? Did you have a very strong reaction

to the near fiscal collapse in 2008 yourself? Yes, and that is the

reason I'm doing Billions, directly as a result of that. My investments

went down 30% in the space of 30 days, that was a concern. I don't

have as many as people in a building like this, but I had some of my

children's education in it. I wanted to know what had happened and why

seemingly these CEOs of the big banks and the FTSE 100 companies did

not know what had happened and even more worryingly that people did not

seem to know the names of the instruments which had been developed

in order to make these bets. Not even the names, much less what they

were. What they did, what they were, no one clearly knew what a directive

was and how far it could be derived from its original source, deep into

the maze. Infinitely. That is why I think Billions is timely. It is part

of a trend which includes The Big Short, too big to fail, and of

course the Walford Wall Street. -- Wolf of Wall Street. This latest

offering pits a charismatic but on sleepless hedge fund manager against

a crusading yet conflicted US attorney. You know about? Your daddy

has a little place out there, he must let you use the bedroom some

weekends. Walk away. I should. The viewer is likely to be torn? Yes,

I've already had... Who the viewer wants to win? Yes, to destroy the

other man, how far will they go? Do you find this world exciting? Yeah,

I do. Does that surprise you? No, no. I actually think it is

fascinating. The breadth of knowledge of many of the people that

work in this world is to be admired. They directly dialled in to what

makes the world go around as they tap numbers into screens and either

make or lose hundreds of millions of pounds each day. This is a show

which wants to explore the financial world, the nature of ambition and

the nature of regulation or no regulation and I think that is the

core at the heart of the story. Drama may rely on fictional heroes

but the financial world has produced some real if unlikely heroes, as

well. Next month Netflix will launch

a new documentary which describes long history of economic crises

from which we have never learned. This film is about the Achilles

heel of capitalism. How human nature drives the economy

to crisis after crisis Presented by Monty

Python's Terry Jones, of distinguished economists,

one of whom saw it all coming. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s,

the economist Hyman Minsky proposed the financial

instability hypothesis. For someone to write about financial

instability in the late This is a period, at least

on the surface, which was the most financially stable period

the United States had ever had. And so it did not seem

like what he was saying was relevant But the producers have found a novel

way to resurrect his voice. So, Hyman, first thing,

why do you think your predictions of a financial crisis went

unheeded for so long? It is comforting to think

that the market will always tend towards equilibrium but it simply

is not true. But it is uncomfortable

for politicians looking to secure votes or placate bankers, to admit

that they are on the precipice Hyman Minsky's is a bubbles

in three stages. The hedge participants

are first in line. # What they say will make our debt

pays the interest on their debt # The second stage

involves some speculation # Speculators borrow

cash to buy more shares # And as long as the market rises

there are no nasty surprises # But when it falls it

takes them unawares #. Hyman, I have to ask,

what happens next? I can only imagine that the circle

of financial instability will start all over again,

as the market appears to stabilise, people will become more confident

and begin to take bigger risks, no matter what measures

are put in place. The neoclassical economics model

will eventually trigger another And now I must bid you farewell. I

hope you've enjoyed our Artsnight. To play us out, here's a number from

Boom Bust Boom. # Where forever blowing Bubbles,

pretty bubbles in the air # They fly so high, nearly reached

the sky # Then like my dreams they fade and

die # Fortune is always hiding, we've

looked everywhere # Where forever blowing Bubbles

# Pretty bubbles in the air # We are forever blowing Bubbles,

pretty bubbles in the air # Pretty bubbles in the air

#.