Mel Brooks and the bankers 1

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In his 18 August 2010 post on VoxEU [Mel Brooks and the bankers], Thorvaldur Gylfason tells us what Mel Brooks’s faux Broadway musical, Springtime for Hitler in his play “The Producers”, has to do with the 1980’s S and L crisis, Enron, WorldCom, and the sub-prime mortgage meltdown of 2007.

BTW, if you haven’t seen Brooks’s “The Producers (1968),” I suggest you check the DVD out at your public library.

-RichardH

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One thought on “Mel Brooks and the bankers”

  • SteveG

    I have finally read the article by Thorvaldur Gylfason. It does much more than explain what “The Producers” has to do with these real-world financial frauds.

    I think it says much more about the value of the article to say that it explains the real-world frauds in terms we can all understand. We can finally understand the real-world in the way we were able to understand the fraud in the fictional “The Producers”.

    The article mentions a book and some key points from that book

    In 2005, the white-collar criminologist, economist, and lawyer William Black published a book entitled “The best way to rob a bank is to own one”.

    Mr. Black has listed the four main characteristics of fraudulent banks.

    • They grow very rapidly;
    • They make really bad loans at high yields (because only borrowers who have no intention of paying back will borrow at exorbitant interest);
    • They pile up huge debts; and
    • They set aside pitifully small loss reserves.