For millions of people, the global economic collapse has generated curiosity about how money systems actually work, as opposed to how they're portrayed, especially when so many financial pundits seem to be baffled. In The Ascent of Money, economist Niall Ferguson works through some history that created today's money system, visiting the locations where key events took place and poring over actual ledgers and documents, such as the first publicly traded share of a company. Viewed with a critical eye, this series aims to show how the history of money is indeed at the core of civilisation, with economic strength determining political dominance, wars fought to create wealth and individual financial barons determining the fates of millions.
1:16:07From the front-lines of conflicts in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, and the North; from Seattle to Genova and the "War on Terror" in New York, Afghanistan, and Iraq, The Fourth World War documents the stories of women and men all around the world who resist being annihilated in this war. Centred around economics and systems such as NAFTA, GATT, the G20, APEC and others, this is a war which plays along with the spread of rapacious globalisation, a feat that has pervasive consequences in the real world...
1:34:54The Big Sellout reveals the reality of privatisation and globalisation by examining the corporate takeover of basic public services throughout the world, such as water supply, electricity, public transportation, and public health care. In South America, Asia, Africa, but also in Europe and the United States, filmmaker Florian Opitz talks to the architects of the new economic world order, as well as to ordinary people who have to deal with the real direct effects. The result is a tapestry of narratives the world over that show where the dogma of privatisation cames from, who profits from it, what societies lose, and why resistance is so important.
46:21With the recent global financial crisis, governments across the world promised decisive action -- the biggest financial stimulus packages in history, along with gargantuan bail-outs of corporations and floods of money into private banks and investment firms. But what crazed logic is this: propping up bad debt with…more bad debt? Overdose reviews the happenings of the bail-outs over these years, showing how dangerous the situation continues as a burst bubble is re-inflated globally. What happens next?
1:44:45Made over five years, with contributions from hundreds of women and over 200 Australian films, For Love or Money is a pictorial account of women's history in Australia over the past decades. The film chronicles the cycles of women's gains and losses as they are moved in and out of the workforce according to demands of the age, revealing how women's unpaid and voluntary work over the years has kept and continues to keep an entire system running smoothly, both in peacetime and in war. In this culture, women do the work that is never paid or still not even recognised as real work. This film shows how this system determines the kinds of jobs women do in the paid workforce--the low-paid, low-status jobs--and how women have fought and organised for equality and wage justice for over a century. For Love or Money remains relevant today as women continue the unfinished campaigns for equal pay, maternity leave and childcare, and still carry the major responsibility for caring and nurturing in the culture of individualism.
1:29:38Along the way to winning an eight-hour workday and fair wages in the early 20th century, the Wobblies were one of the few unions to be racially and sexually integrated and often met with imprisonment, violence, and the privations of prolonged strikes. The Wobblies airs a provocative look at the forgotten American history of this most radical of unions, screening the unforgettable and still-fiery voices of Wobbly members -- lumberjacks, migratory workers, and silk weavers -- in their 70s, 80s, and 90s.
1:18:01The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire shows how Britain transformed from a colonial power into a global financial power. At the demise of empire, the City of London's financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures, and webs of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth may be hidden in British offshore jurisdictions, and these are now the largest players in the world of international finance. Based in part on the book Treasure Islands by expert Nicholas Shaxson, and through contributions from former-insiders, academics, and campaigners for justice, The Spider's Web reveals how, in the world of international finance, corruption and secrecy have prevailed over regulation and transparency, and how the United Kingdom is a pioneer of the modern corrupt global economy.
51:35The Tax Free Tour travels the globe to expose the workings of offshore tax havens and the elite banking systems of the world's billionaires which operate in extreme secrecy. Using examples from multi-national corporations such as Apple Computer and Starbucks, the film traces sizeable capital streams that travel the world literally in milliseconds--all to avoid local laws and paying tax. Such routes go by resounding names like 'Cayman Special', 'Double Irish', and 'Dutch Sandwich'. The Tax Free Tour is a sobering look at how the world's rich live in an entirely different world than the rest of us...
50:29The Wall Street Code explores the once-secret lucrative world of prolific algorithmic trading by profiling an inside programmer who, in 2012, dared to stand up against Wall Street and its extreme culture of secrecy, to blow the whistle on insights into the way the modern global money market works. His name is Haim Bodek—aka 'The Algo Arms Dealer'—and having worked for Goldman Sachs, his revelations speak to the new kind of wealth made only possible by vast mathematical formulas, computer technologies and clever circumventions of laws and loophole exploits. Vast server farms and algorithms working beyond the timescale of human comprehension, have largely taken over human trading on the global financial markets for decades. What are the implications of that? The algorithms seem to have a life of their own. Snippets of code secretly lie waiting for the moment that your pension fund gets on the market; trades done in nanoseconds on tiny fluctuations in stock prices. And the only ones who understand this system are its architects—the algorithm developers. The Wall Street Code provides just a small insight into this new world of high-frequency trading, amongst other things...
29:12Perfect Storm offers an initial analysis of the underlying causes and wider context surrounding the riots throughout England in 2011. Contrary to the portrayals presented by mainstream media and trite political rhetoric around law and order, the riots were sparked by poverty, inequality and frustration over police killing a young man in Tottenham. How does the damage weigh up to the criminal conduct of banks and corporate tax avoiders when the costs of the riots are over four thousand times less than the recent financial crisis? Whose priorities are at play here?
54:31The Power of the Fed investigates how the United States central bank's actions have played out over the years on Wall Street versus Main Street, since the last financial crash of 2008. The film traces how the experiment the Fed began in 2008 has been dramatically ratcheting up, peaking with the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. But, of course, rather than help correct from the huge corruption and financial abstractions that caused the 2008 crash, the fed has doubled down on its policies of "quantitative easing" which have gone on to help widen the greatest inequality of wealth in history, pushing financial products even further removed from the economy, driving inflation, automation, and worsening the impending cycles of boom and bust. The rise of speculative cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has only fueled the mania, as economic volatility increases.
Far from ending with the abolition of slavery, the trade in human beings is thriving more than ever before. Today, 27 million men, women and children are held, sold and trafficked as slaves throughout the world. From the sex slaves of Eastern Europe to China's prison labour slaves; from Brazil's hellish charcoal slave camps to entire families enslaved in Pakistan's brick kilns, this series exposes the people behind modern slavery and the companies who profit from it.
2:24:01Did you know that the legal system recognises a corporation as a person? What kind of 'person' is it then? What would happen if it sat down with a psychologist to discuss its behaviour and attitude towards society and the environment? Explored through specific examples, this film shows how and why the modern-day corporation has rapaciously pressed itself into the dominant institution of our time, posing big questions about what must be done if we want a equitable and sustainable world. What must we do when corporations are psychopaths?
1:12:39In Requiem for the American Dream, renowned intellectual figure Noam Chomsky deliberates on the defining characteristics of our time—the colossal concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few and fewer, with the rise of a rapacious individualism and complete collapse of class consciousness. Chomsky does this by discussing some of the key principles that have brought this culture to the pinnacle of historically unprecedented inequality by tracing a half century of policies designed to favour the most wealthy at the expense of the majority, while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. The film serves to provide insights into how we got here, and culminates as a reminder that these problems are not inevitable. Once we remember those who came before and those who will come after, we see that we can, and should, fight back.
24:40Six years after the housing bubble burst in the United States in 2008, the worst is yet to come. After a recent landmark settlement, major banks have lifted the freeze on foreclosures, with evictions again in full swing. Public housing budgets have been slashed, while the thin line between home ownership and homelessness grows ever more wide. People are angry about the impunity of the banks and some have found innovative ways of fighting back in an age of austerity. For Sale travels to Chicago and California to see how people at the forefront of the crisis are confronting the collapse of the American dream.
27:09Cases of 'rent for sex' in the UK are on the increase, where landlords offer free rooms in their properties in exchange for 'sexual favours'. Investigative journalist Ellie Flynn goes undercover to get a closer look at this issue. Armed with undercover cameras, she meets landlords who post these ads to find out what they really expect in exchange for rent. The landlords she confronts protest that what they're doing is acceptable, contrasted with young women who have taken up these arrangements and talk about how much consent they felt able to give when the alternative was a life on the streets. Despite laws that exist to criminalise this practice, Ellie asks why there doesn't seem to be anyone doing anything to prevent it. From police forces to the Ministry of Justice, she uncovers a vacuum of responsibility that currently exists.
59:01For more than two years the Eurozone has teetered on the edge of an economic precipice. But how exactly did it get into the current financial mess? Talking to historians, economists and politicians, The Great Euro Crash takes a long view of the euro--from Churchill's vision of a United States of Europe; to the bail-outs of Greece, Portugal and Ireland. Meeting a property developer in Ireland, a taxi driver in Rome and a German manufacturing worker; the film exposes the high cost being paid by European workers today for the dream of European Union—how the entire system has so far come to a complete banking meltdown. The crisis could yet claim Britain, with its vast financial sector, dragged down by the collapse of the euro. And the cost of reviving the complex economy is so high, triggering a return to the economic mayhem of the 1930s.
Money is a new form of slavery and is only distinguishable from the old slavery simply by the fact that it is impersonal--that there is no human relation between master and slave. Debt in government, corporate and household has reached astronomical proportions. Where does all this money come from? How could there be that much money to lend? The answer is that there isn’t...
55:34Nearly 100 years after its creation, the power of the United States Federal Reserve has never been greater. Governments and financial systems around the world pay close attention to the Fed Chairman's every word, philosophies and ideologies. Yet the average person knows very little about the most powerful and least understood financial institution. Money For Nothing takes viewers inside the Fed and reveals the impact of Fed policies past, present, and future.
1:45:01The End of Poverty? traces the growth of global poverty back to colonisation in the 15th century to reveal why it's not an accident or simple bad luck that there is a growing underclass around the world. Featuring interviews with a number of economists, sociologists, and historians, the film details how poverty is the clear consequence of free-market economic policy which has allowed powerful nations to exploit poorer ones for their assets, turning the money back to the hands of the concentrated few. This also follows on to how wealthy nations--especially the United States--thereby exert massive debts, seize a much disproportionate exploit of the natural world, and how this deep imbalance has dire consequences on the environment and on people...
53:29The Secret History of the Credit Card uncovers the deceptive techniques and tactics used by banks and financial corporations to get citizens to take on ever more debt, while earning record profits. Penalty fees, defaulting, changing contracts, increasing rates retrospectively---these are some of the ways credit card companies gouge their users, and increase influence. The film shows how such profitability of credit cards began in the 1980s, when the banking industry successfully eliminated the limit on the interest rate a lender can charge a borrower. This deregulation, coupled with real-time tracking of personal financial information, facilitated the widening availability of credit cards. Despite a growing number of consumer complaints, the ability of state and local governments to investigate the credit card companies has virtually been eliminated, due to companies incessant lobbying and litigation that has created a jurisdictional "turf battle."
49:05The Chicago Sessions explores the ethical implications of the financial crisis during three sessions with a group of law and philosophy students. The grounds of the University of Chicago provide a compelling arena, since it is here that both economist Milton Friedman—staunch promoter of free market capitalism—and Barack Obama, lectured. Examples of crisis related issues discussed during the sessions are: mortgage lending practices, foreclosures, bail outs and CEO pay. The students will test their ideas both on eminent professors and on field experts. The discussion is fueled and illustrated by case stories that the students themselves provide. The cases show how the financial crisis really affects the people of Chicago and in one example shows the consequences of the foreclosures in a neighborhood not far from the university and Barack Obama's home.
1:14:02The film is a video essay by Professor Albert Bartlett essentially serving as an introduction to the concept of steady growth and doubling time, by taking us through the impacts and consequences of exponential growth on a finite planet. By making good observations of this impossible growth as applied to fossil-fuel consumption, population and the endless growth of which the global economy requires, this presentation gives us the basic tools to fundamentally understand that we've got a real problem on our hands.
47:18"Quants" are the mathematicians, software developers and computer programmers at the centre of the global economy. These are the people who designed the "complex financial products" that caused the financial crisis of 2008. Here they speak openly about their game of huge profits, and how the global economy has become increasingly dependent on mathematical models that quantify commodified human behaviours to the point of insanity. But things don't stop there. Through the convergence of economy and technology, the Quants have now brought this model into the world of the machines, where trades are done at the speed of light, far from the realm of human experience. The machines are in charge. Some Quants are even now worried. What are the risks of this complex machine? Will the Quants be able to keep control of this financial system, or have they created a monster?
25:00Mongolia is the next target for the world's biggest mining corporations for copper. The Oyu Tolgoi mine currently under construction in the South Gobi Desert is a combined open-pit and underground mine due to start extraction in the next few months of 2012. But the problems don't end there. The Oyu Tolgoi deal between the Mongolian government and the massive Australian mining company Rio Tinto is truly indicative—Mongolia gets just 34 percent, while Rio Tinto is exempt from a profits tax and receives open access to scarce desert aquifers and the provisioning of water to people living close to land that the mining company now claims to own. The Big Dig documents how this avaricious mining-driven culture comes at the expense of the natural world and the way of life of local communities.
52:14Your retirement plan, if you're even lucky enough to have one, is a gamble. Fees, self-dealing, kickbacks, deregulation and/or no regulation at all brings great profits to the financial system, while imperiling the future of individuals who provide 100% of the funds, take 100% of the risks, but only get 30% of the returns. Even the privileged Baby Boomer generation now faces uncertainties, to say nothing of those who come after and face an even more staggering wealth inequality. The paternalistic "American dream" of the 1950s has long been over. Now, thanks to decades of neoliberalism, with a financial system geared towards short term profits and externalising risks and costs, the retirement fund industry is a ten trillion dollar industry, protected by obfuscation and complexity. The Retirement Gamble offers a window into this racket, raising just some of the troubling questions about how this supposed system claims to "work for everyone" when it does nothing of the sort, by design.
43:25Cover Up
Why did appointed officials of the Australian Reserve Bank and its employees break sanctions in Iraq and cosy up to Saddam Hussein through a frontman during the late 1990s, early 2000s and beyond? Why did a former Deputy Governor and other directors hand-picked by the Reserve Bank to safeguard its subsidiary companies from corruption, end up--over a decade--overseeing some of the most corrupt business practices possible? How did they allow millions of dollars to be wired to third parties in foreign countries--including a known arms dealer--in order to win banknote contracts knowingly using bribery and supporting corruption?
The Mayfair Set is a four part series that studies how capitalists overtly and surreptitiously came to prolifically shape governments during the 1980s, epitomised by the Thatcher government in Britain at the time. But the corporate influence of political power doesn't simply arrive, it rather culminates after decades of engineering rooted in the economic collapse from the aftermath of the Second World War. This series focuses on the unreported and almost unseen approach that capitalists have taken since the 1940s to gradually take control of the political systems of not only the United States and Britain, but elsewhere around the world—exemplified by the boom of globalisation.