Yesterday I watched a film made in the 80s, by Jane Fonda. As the picture unfolded I discovered that I was watching a prediction of this credit crunch in which we find ourselves. I sat through it enthralled, Sophie slept through most of it. It was broadcast early in the day, when I had recorded it from Sky Movies to look at later. Basically it was a murder story, Fonda’s husband was the victim, because he had discovered an incredible scam, perpetrated by some of the top people in the financial field. The film was called ‘Rollover ‘.
I won’t bore you with all the details of the film, sufficient to say that a mechanism had been placed in computer systems of a dealing room, or rooms, which hived off 5% of the value of some of the bigger deals that were in hundreds of millions. This money was converted into bullion, on paper, then sent to the Middle East. Jane Fonda had formed an association with a banker, and between them they uncovered the scam, but as a result of which the whole of the banking system of the world collapsed, when remedies were tried. The head of the scam turned out to be a member of the government control unit of the financial system.
This film raised for me a number of questions. The first is obvious, if in the 80s they could make a film which was as detailed and as a logical as this, then a large number of people at the top of the financial markets must know and have known how this scam could be perpetrated. So why was it allowed to continue from its outset? The fact of the film being made and exhibited away back in the 80s, should have alerted the financial sector to the possibility, and I would have thought that the financial sector would have been alerted, by word of mouth, that this film was on show. Perhaps like Sophie they were all asleep. Sophie and I are fortunate, in that, we are told that a certain portion of each of our savings is sacrosanct, presupposing that the government keeps its word. If I was a young man today, of honest and sober nature, who thought he had a future that was buttoned-down, and then discovered that through no fault of his nor his employer, his innovative and burgeoning firm had gone bust, I would be looking for a few heads to roll among the well off, who had perpetrated or allowed the scam to go on unheeded.