The birth of money – Oeconomia
There are things in our world that are so self-evident that we no longer think about where they actually come from. One of those things is money. But how is money created? In Oeconomia film director Carmen Losmann reveals the trail of money – a review.
Filmstill from Oeconomia
A group of experts sit on a conference table in the middle of a shopping street and play a modern type of Monopoly. Unlike in the regular game, in this version the amount of money in the bank is not limited. It’s created by the bank. This way, the movie playfully illustrates the root of our current money system: Banks create money through the granting of credit. In the next scene a banker reenacts the simple mechanic process for the viewer: A short meeting with a client, checking his credibility and then, just a few computer strokes of double-entry bookkeeping later – new money is created. Bit by bit, we learn to understand the "elephant in the room": Money is literally created out of thin air. It is created through debt. Every time a credit is taken the whole sum of money in the world increases, every time it is paid back, the sum decreases. The creditor is the most important actor in our money system. Without creditors, banks can’t create money and businesses can’t generate profits.
Oeconomia by Carmen Losmann illustrates the complexity of the contemporary money system. Losmann makes the subject accessible and understandable, while creating an exciting story about the otherwise unsexy financial sector. By asking naive questions, she draws perplexity in the faces of her interview partners. High ranking managers, lawyers and other big fishes in the financial industry become silent, when she asks: How is money created? How are profits generated and where does inflation come from?
The documentary is fiercely current. Oeconomia goes beyond the usual, impersonal phrases of financial and economic reporting. Instead, it focuses on illuminating how contemporary capitalism really works. With the help of charts and graphics, it renders the complex workings of the modern money system understandable to the viewer. Through the combination of mathematical graphics on a computer desktop and images of the glassy modern buildings of Frankfurt's financial sector, the movie creates a mechanical, clean atmosphere of transparency and brings the hidden to light: It is a zero-sum game that harnesses us and our entire world to the logic of an endlessly perpetuating increase in capital - no matter what the cost. But Oeconomia is not only a film about the financial economy, it also depicts the people who operate within it. The filmmaker encounters concealment of knowledge or obvious ignorance various times during her research. Again and again, we see stammering answers to simple inquiries. The unwillingness of the interview partners, high ranking bankers, to answer those questions give rise to the thought that we are not supposed to understand what’s going on in the financial sector.
Watching Oeconomia made me question the status quo a lot more. Using money to exchange goods is one of the most normal things to do, almost everywhere on the planet. But the way it is created and circulates in the world is a hidden secret for most of us. Seemingly too complex to understand and too difficult to change. Oceconomia reveals: that’s not true. But what are the alternatives? At the very end, Lossmann symbolically opens up another folder on her desktop: “Research on alternatives”. And I am indeed very excited to see what she will find.
Oeconomia (2020). Carmen Losmann.
Trailer with English subtitles.
