Wolfs inside and out the Animal Farm

Banking, ratings, stock exchange, recapitalization, off-shore companies, government bonds, euro crisis: terms very much “in vogue” for the past few years, especially in European media and everyday conversation. To cut a long story short, for the past few years, not a day goes by without the media extensively delving into the financial sector and it’s inner workings.

But what do these terms stand for? What about the people behind these words? The people that manage those banks, set up those companies and close those deals? How are they like? The latest movies by Martin Scorsese and Costa Gavras are trying to answer that question, under different perspectives that sometimes converge.  The two films give us an insight as to the lifestyle of the “flora and fauna” of the financial sector.

The main characters of both movies are professionals of the financial sector – a banker in France in Costa Gavras’s “Le Capital” and a stockbroker in the US in Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street”. Scorsese’s film is based on a book, which is based on a real story; and that’s what makes it even more unsettling. So, if 180 minutes of decadence and debauchery are not enough to affect you, then you’ll certainly be amazed by the fact that the “Wolf of Wall Street”’s main character was released from federal prison just after 22 months of detention served, having been convicted to a reduced 4-year term due to his cooperation with the FBI. Cooperation basically meaning double-crossing former associates. The “Wolf of Wall Street” is honest in its directness and lack of sophistication. Money is spent on hookers, lobsters and ludes: nobody would try to use their index finger to hide behind. It was the middle finger they would use. And they were damn proud of it.

Gavras’s story is not real, but, regardless of the poetic licenses of the film, could well be. What is disturbing about the bankers in “Le Capital” is this feigned sophistication in their lifestyle, behind which all wrong-doing is hidden, in contrast to the raw debauchery of “The Wolf”. I won’t go as far as to attribute this divergence to the differences between French/European and American lifestyle; probably the American counterparts of the Phenix bankers would share the same lifestyles. I wouldn’t even attribute it to the difference between the more “institutionalized” role of a banker in contrast to the profit-hunting stockbroker. It’s a whole different approach on money-making.

In the “Wolf of Wall Street”, the main characters are former middle- or even working class people. People that are bright or at least street-wise or just happen to have the “right” connections and no ethical scruples. They wanna make money fast, lots of it, and spend it as fast as they can in a purely hedonistic way. Monkey parades in the office, dwarf throwing competitions, hookers of all price ranges: all symbols of a category of greedy, visceral money-makers that more than often end up losing control of the situation and getting busted (even though the results of their “prison tennis court” correctional treatment might be far from what someone would expect).

In “Le Capital”, on the other hand, the approach on money-making is garnished by a lifestyle of sophistication to the maximum: Opera houses, art exhibitions, respectable educated wives. It remains a very hedonistic lifestyle, but hidden behind a curtain of social and professional respectability. As it is conspicuously stated on a banner in a fashion show hosted by a famous Parisian museum that the Phenix Bank CEO attends, “Luxury is a right”. The bankers in “Le Capital”, and the professional class that they represent, try to maintain what they already have and strive to gain even more – in money and status – with swift and ruthless moves in this “unjust, cruel, but […] worldwide” game. There is a dialogue, though, between the Phenix CEO and his wife that illustrates that it’s not only about the money for the money’s sake: “- I do not give a damn for their [the shareholders] respect. – Then, what do you wish? – Money. – Money, why? – So that they will respect me”. The only way these people might get side-lined from the game is in case they have not understood well how the game is played: maybe they are not useful to others anymore or they let their guard down just for one fatal second. But these are just exceptions: the rule is impunity.  

In a recently published article by the Spanish newspaper “El País”, is was revealed that Dutch, German and French banks exacerbated the euro crisis in 2010 by failing to honour agreements on Greece made in the IMF. The Spanish economist Jose Carlo Díez described the article as the latest evidence of “the immorality of the entire euro crisis.” Who could doubt that gambling at the expense of millions of citizens across Europe is indeed immoral? And if the crisis is immoral, so it follows that the institutions that are involved in it are also immoral. But moral judgment is reserved to human beings: banking institutions, rating agencies, intergovernmental institutions are all made up of people.

Is it then really the people behind the euro crisis who are immoral? Having watched these two movies, once is convinced at least of this: that’s not a business for everyone. One needs to possess vast inner reserves of insensitivity, endurance and a limitless desire for power in order to advance in the world of finance. After all, as was cynically proclaimed in a BBC interview that went viral about three years ago, “governments don’t rule the world; Goldman Sachs rules the world.”

The ending of both films is rather pessimistic as to the conclusion both Gavras and Scorsese draw: the conclusion is that that’s the name of the game. The “Wolf of Wall Street” ends with a humorous touch as to the “downfall” of Jordan Belfort’s still far from penniless existence. “Le Capital” ends with a touch of surrealism and black humor, when Marc Tourneuil, the Phenix Bank CEO, triumphantly declares before the board: “My friends, I am a modern Robin Hood. We will take from the poor and give it to the rich”, only to be followed by a thunderous applause. And this is exactly when the ending of Orwell’s “Animal Farm” comes to mind: “Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”