A Trip to the Cinema

Macro Man recently finished reading Flash Boys, which was certainly entertaining if somewhat incomplete.  While some of the other explorations of high-frequency trading are evidently more thorough, Michael Lewis is close to unparalleled in his ability to craft a storyline from specialist arcana that can appeal to the layman.  Who could have imagined, for example, that Moneyball (a book about quantitative analysis in baseball) would turn into a film featuring Brad Pitt?

As his mind wandered the other day, Macro Man found himself wondering who might play the relevant characters in a film version of Flash Boys.  Lost in thought, it occurred to him that in some ways, the film had already been made.   For what better description of Lewis's book could you come up with than Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines?



At the same time, the very best-selling book on Amazon is the English translation of a 700 page book by French economist Thomas Piketty: Capital in the Twenty-First Century.  The book has become something of a phenomenon, generating reams of lavish praise or opprobrium, generally depending on the existing views of the reviewer.   Either way, it struck your author that the crux of Piketty's tome, with its focus on income inequality, could be summarized in the title of the old Bogart/Bacall vehicle: To Have and Have Not



This naturally set Macro Man off to thinking what other notable economic and financial books may already have been "inadvertently" made into films already.


A couple of years ago, Daniel Kahneman wrote an excellent book that explores the insights gained from his academic career in Thinking, Fast and Slow.   The description of the two modes of thought resonated with Macro Man, and he thoroughly enjoyed the book.   The title, meanwhile, recalls the story of Charly (itself taken from Flowers for Algernon), a mentally handicapped man who undergoes a procedure that renders him a genius.









One of the most prominent financial commentators of the last decade is, like him or loathe him, Nicholas Nassim Taleb.  In Fooled by Randomness he popularized the notion of the "Black Swan", and then followed up by writing a book with that very name.  Following the financial crisis, of course, the Fed and other central banks have done their utmost (a little bit of regulation and lot of  financial repression) to stave off further market volatility.  For the time being, therefore, the most appropriate film adaptation of the Taleb corpus would be Bye-Bye Blackbird.  (Macro Man can't wait to see the sequel, though...)




 


Finally, one of the great debates of the post-crisis era has been the appropriate role of fiscal policy.  In the Eurozone, for example, economic recovery has been stayed by Calvinist fiscal austerity...but the prior economic crisis was the result of market rejection of Dionysian fiscal profligacy.   Regrettably but unsurprisingly, demagogues on both sides of the fiscal debate have tended to employ less-than-nuanced arguments in favour of their viewpoint.  One prominent example is of course Paul Krugman, a persistent advocate for fiscal spending who appears unwilling to acknowledge the potential downsides of such a strategy (viz. the Eurozone.)  As such, Macro Man wonders if his Economics textbook could not be cast as a remake of Brewster's Millions, the film in which Richard Pryor must spend absurd amounts of someone's else's money on unproductive services as a means of enriching himself....

Readers are of course invited (nay, encouraged) to come up with their own film adaptations in the comments section.   As for those hoping for a sober analysis of corporate earnings or the RBNZ...sorry, better luck tomorrow!