The Man Said "Just Call It"

I know movies are made purely as entertainments, but once in a while we are lucky to find movies that do a double duty: as entertainments and as commentaries on what’s happening in our world.

For the Financial Crisis of 2008, Up In the Air has a great deal to say, but I nominate 1977 John Badham’s Saturday Night Fever and 2007 Coen brother’s No Country For Old Men as perfect metaphors for debt and gambling in America.

A scene in Saturday Night Fever opens with John Travolta as Tony Manero walking down a busy Brooklyn Street. The walk has the rhythm and the swagger down to his shoes. Life full with confidence. A picture of a young man on the go. He stops to order the pizza, his usual the double. Further on down the street he spots a shirt he likes. He goes into the shop, and said to the salesman: “Hey, you guys do layaway?” The salesman’s quick response: “As long as it didn’t turn into a 30-year mortgage.” Tony to salesman: “Here is five dollars for a blue shirt in the window, hold it.” The next scene opens with Tony asking an advance on his salary from his boss at the hardware store he work, as the latter was closing the shop for the day. The boss said to Tony: “You can save a little and build the future.” Tony to boss: “F… the future!”. Boss : “No Tony, you can’t f … the future; the future f…. you; it catches up with you, and f… you if you ain’t plan for it.”

The next movie is No Country For Old Men. A scene from it is a perfect coda to the scene from the Saturday Night Fever.

A man come into a lone gas station in a desert at dusk. The man look menacing, apparently looking for troubles. In the middle of a desultory conversation between the lone attendant and the man, the man take out a coin, ask the attendant “What is the most you ever lost in a coin toss?” and toss it. And while still covering the coin with his hand, he instruct the attendant to call it. The attendant demur by saying “We need to know what we are calling it for here,” But the man continue to press on calling it. He said “I can’t call it for you, or it wouldn’t be fair.” Finally, the man said “You know what date is on this coin?” “1958” he answer himself, and without pausing he said that the coin has been “travelling 22 years to get here; and now it’s here; and it’s here, head or tail.” “You need to call it.” “I didn’t put nothing up,” the attendant reply. The man still would not let go. The attendant finally give up by asking what he stand to win by calling it. “Everything” reply the man. The attendant made the right call, and his life was spared.

In our case back in the real world, the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been telling us what the American economy is suffering from. He said it is a Great Repression, instead of a Great Depression which would have been unimaginably worst.

Thanks. Well done.

But still what I really like to know is when or where was the Great Repression hatched. Is DEBT the reason for the CRASH? I can’t believe that an ordinary kind of debt – the grease of modern economies – can cause such extensive damages. After all, we have been demanding from each other our pound of flesh ever since Adam and Eve walks the earth. Venice was not built in a day.

If debt really is the culprit, then it must be debts from the double and the triple deckers.

So what is the great lesson we all must learn? You can’t fool Mother Nature all the times or some of the times? Or that you cannot fool the people with the money because they can fool you first.