Financial thriller

Last updated

Financial thrillers are a subgenre of thriller fiction in which the financial system and economy play a major role.

Contents

History

The novel The Financier (1912) by Theodore Dreiser displays elements of a financial thriller and is an early example of the genre. Paul Erdman helped popularize the modern financial thriller, with The Billion Dollar Sure Thing (1973). The former president of a Swiss bank, he penned the novel while in jail awaiting trial on fraud charges related to speculating in the cocoa market.

Overview

In many cases the protagonist of a financial thriller is a financial professional such as Christian Slater’s character in the 2005 film The Deal , or John Kent in Martin Bodenham's [1] 2011 novel, The Geneva Connection. Often, the plot centers on a financial crime. It may be a crime that merely enriches a small number of individuals as with The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer, or one that threatens the entire financial system, as in Tom Clancy’s Debt of Honor (1994). In "Flash Crash," by Denison Hatch the financial crime involves an algorithmic programmer ("quant") who is blackmailed into writing a program that will crash the international gold markets.

Financial thrillers are often used as morality plays to illustrate the evils of greed, as in Black Money (1995), by Michael M. Thomas. [2] [3]

In the wake of the late-2000s financial crisis, some financial thrillers took on educational roles. The 2011 HBO TV-movie Too Big to Fail is, in the words of Jesse Eisinger, "extraordinarily revealing about the financial crisis" [4] but not always in a helpful way. [5] For example, Eisinger says, "The government gave the banks money but didn't get voting rights and didn't prevent the banks from using the money to pay dividends or bonuses. They wrote what was essentially a blank check...It's left to the hapless PR woman...to wonder why, if the government is saving these institutions, it couldn't impose any limits on how the money be used." Another film in this genre is J. C. Chandor's Academy Award-nominated Margin Call , also from 2011. [6]

The novel The Economics of Ego Surplus: A Novel About the Global Economy (2010) by Paul McDonnold (originally subtitled "A Novel of Economic Terrorism") involves Kyle Linwood, a teacher, graduate student going for his doctorate in economics, and former victim of Libyan terrorist kidnappers, whose knowledge of Africa and economics become important when the U.S. stock market begins crashing due to massive and inexplicable sales. According to the Book Dilettante, [7] [8] "The author explains supply and demand, recession and inflation, the history of economics and Adam Smith, Keynes['] economic theory, the theory of contemporary neoclassical economists, and does so in a way that even high school students would understand[.]"

In the 2010s, The Big Short was adapted from a non-fiction book into a movie, and it is also a prominent financial thriller. [9]

List of financial thrillers

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Money laundering</span> Process of concealing the origin of money

Money laundering is the process of illegally concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions with varying definitions. It is usually a key operation of organized crime.

This aims to be a complete article list of economics topics:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deficit spending</span> Spending in excess of revenue

Within the budgetary process, deficit spending is the amount by which spending exceeds revenue over a particular period of time, also called simply deficit, or budget deficit; the opposite of budget surplus. The term may be applied to the budget of a government, private company, or individual. Government deficit spending was first identified as a necessary economic tool by John Maynard Keynes in the wake of the Great Depression. It is a central point of controversy in economics, as discussed below.

Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form of profit, rent, interest, royalties or capital gains. The aim of capital accumulation is to create new fixed and working capitals, broaden and modernize the existing ones, grow the material basis of social-cultural activities, as well as constituting the necessary resource for reserve and insurance. The process of capital accumulation forms the basis of capitalism, and is one of the defining characteristics of a capitalist economic system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Jane</span> American actor (born 1969)

Thomas Jane is an American actor. He is known for appearing in the films Boogie Nights (1997), Deep Blue Sea (1999), The Sweetest Thing (2002), The Punisher (2004), The Mist (2007), 1922 (2017), and The Predator (2018). Jane's television roles include Mickey Mantle in the television film 61* (2001), and starring in the HBO series Hung (2009–2011) and the Syfy/Amazon Video series The Expanse (2015–2022).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell</span> British businessman (born 1955)

Jonathan Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell is a British businessman and academic who was Chairman of the Financial Services Authority during the global financial crisis, serving from 2008 until its abolition in March 2013. He is a former Chairman of the Pensions Commission and the Committee on Climate Change, as well as a former Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry. He has described himself in a BBC HARDtalk interview with Stephen Sackur as a 'technocrat'.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Paulson</span> 74th United States Secretary of the Treasury (born 1946)

Henry "Hank" Merritt Paulson Jr. is an American banker and financier who served as the 74th United States Secretary of the Treasury from 2006 to 2009. Prior to his role in the Department of the Treasury, Paulson was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of major investment bank Goldman Sachs.

Fictitious capital is a concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It is introduced in chapter 25 of the third volume of Capital. Fictitious capital contrasts with what Marx calls "real capital", which is capital actually invested in physical means of production and workers, and "money capital", which is actual funds being held. The market value of fictitious capital assets varies according to the expected return or yield of those assets in the future, which Marx felt was only indirectly related to the growth of real production. Effectively, fictitious capital represents "accumulated claims, legal titles, to future production" and more specifically claims to the income generated by that production.

Jo Eisinger was a film and television writer whose career spanned more than 40 years from the early 1940s well into the 1980s. He is widely recognized as the writer of two of the most psychologically complex film noirs, Gilda (1946) and Night and the City (1950).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeffrey Robinson</span> American author of 30 books (born October 19, 1945)

Jeffrey Robinson is an American author of 30 books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern monetary theory</span> Macroeconomic theory

Modern monetary theory or modern money theory (MMT) is a heterodox macroeconomic theory that describes currency as a public monopoly and unemployment as evidence that a currency monopolist is overly restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires. According to MMT, governments do not need to worry about accumulating debt since they can create new money by using fiscal policy in order to pay interest. MMT argues that the primary risk once the economy reaches full employment is inflation, which acts as the only constraint on spending. MMT also argues that inflation can be addressed by increasing taxes on everyone to reduce the spending capacity of the private sector.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Too big to fail</span> Concept in economics

"Too big to fail" (TBTF) is a theory in banking and finance that asserts that certain corporations, particularly financial institutions, are so large and so interconnected that their failure would be disastrous to the greater economic system, and therefore should be supported by government when they face potential failure. The colloquial term "too big to fail" was popularized by U.S. Congressman Stewart McKinney in a 1984 Congressional hearing, discussing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's intervention with Continental Illinois. The term had previously been used occasionally in the press, and similar thinking had motivated earlier bank bailouts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Hudson (economist)</span> American economist

Michael Hudson is an American economist, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College, former Wall Street analyst, political consultant, commentator and journalist. He is a contributor to The Hudson Report, a weekly economic and financial news podcast produced by Left Out.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Ross Sorkin</span> American journalist and author

Andrew Ross Sorkin is an American journalist and author. He is a financial columnist for The New York Times and a co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box. He is also the founder and editor of DealBook, a financial news service published by The New York Times. He wrote the bestselling book Too Big to Fail and co-produced a movie adaptation of the book for HBO Films. He is also a co-creator of the Showtime series Billions.

Magnetar Capital is a hedge fund based in Evanston, Illinois. The firm was founded in 2005 and invests in fixed-income, energy, quantitative, and event-driven strategies. The firm was actively involved in the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market during the 2006–2007 period. In some articles critical of Magnetar Capital, the firm's arbitrage strategy for CDOs is described as the "Magnetar trade".

<i>Inside Job</i> (2010 film) 2010 American film

Inside Job is a 2010 American documentary film, directed by Charles Ferguson, about the late-2000s financial crisis. Ferguson, who began researching in 2008, said the film is about "the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption", amongst them conflicts of interest of academic research, which led to improved disclosure standards by the American Economic Association. In five parts, the film explores how changes in the policy environment and banking practices helped create the financial crisis.

<i>Too Big to Fail</i> (film) 2011 TV biographical film on the 2008 financial crisis directed by Curtis Hanson

Too Big to Fail is a 2011 American biographical drama television film directed by Curtis Hanson and written by Peter Gould, based on Andrew Ross Sorkin's 2009 non-fiction book Too Big to Fail. The film aired on HBO on May 23, 2011. It received 11 nominations at the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards; Paul Giamatti's portrayal of Ben Bernanke earned him the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie at the 18th Screen Actors Guild Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2007–2008 financial crisis</span> Worldwide economic crisis

The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or Global Financial Crisis (GFC), was a severe worldwide economic crisis that occurred in the early 21st century. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929). Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jesse Eisinger</span> American journalist and author

Jesse Eisinger is an American journalist and author. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2011, he currently works as a senior reporter for ProPublica. His first book, The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2017.

References

  1. ↑ "Financial Thrillers - Martin Bodenham". martinbodenham.com.
  2. ↑ "Books of The Times; A Financial Thriller With a Message". The New York Times. 27 June 1994.
  3. ↑ Lehman-Haupt, Christopher. Books of the Times: A Financial Thriller With a Message. New York Times. 6/27/1994.
  4. ↑ Eisinger, Jesse (25 May 2011). "In HBO's 'Too Big to Fail,' the Heroes Are Really Zeroes". propublica.org.
  5. ↑ Eisinger, Jesse. In HBO’s ‘Too Big to Fail,’ the Heroes Are Really Zeroes. ProPublica, May 25, 2011.
  6. ↑ Movie review: Financial thriller “Margin Call” cuts close to the bone - The Denver Post
  7. ↑ "Book Bird Dog". bookbirddog.blogspot.com.
  8. ↑ Book Dilettante. Book Review: The Economics of Ego Surplus, a Novel of Economic Terrorism by Paul McDonnold. Bookbirddog.blogspot.com, OCT 29, 2011.
  9. ↑ Carly Mallenbaum (November 13, 2015). "'Big Short' premiere: Can the movie's stars still use financial jargon?". USA Today . Retrieved January 3, 2022.
  10. ↑ What Makes A Great Financial Thriller? | LitReactor
  11. ↑ 13 Movies Like The Wolf Of Wall Street That Are Definitely Worth Watching - Slash Film
  12. ↑ Virgin Film: Oliver Stone - Google Books
  13. ↑ Money Monster: the financial thriller that'll leave you short-changed - The Guardian

See also

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.