Bankers often do not understand the complicated financial terms they use, and much of the financial world is a bluff, American actor Richard Gere said in a Financial Times interview, as he talks about his new film, “Arbitrage.”
In the movie, Gere plays a hedge fund manager who lost over $400 million in a business with a copper mine in Russia and committed fraud to cover the loss. The film begins with Gere’s character giving an interview to CNBC presenter Maria Bartiromo, in which the actor uses financial terms hard to understand by ordinary people.
Although he speaks bankers’ language in the film, the actor admitted to the Financial Times that he does not understand what those words mean. “Not a clue,” said Gere, who believes that neither bankers that he discussed with did not understand the financial terminology.
“I’m watching their eyes because I want to see their mental process. Literally, I don’t think they knew what they were! It’s all a bluff, but I think most of the financial world is a bluff,” he said. Bankers are not the despicable because of this, says Gere.
“It’s more despicable of us to allow them to have the power. This is a very subtle game they play. It’s with the security of you and your family. And that touches you very deep, right? That’s an emotional place. Immediately, from their side, they’ve played a magic trick on you that I’m the deity. And from our side, it’s, God, I wish there was someone that I could trust. It’s very symbiotic …” he added.
Gere used for his character the model of one of the renowned bankers, chief of JPMorgan group, Jamie Dimon. Dimon is the perfect model for the character in the film, a man very talented, decent in parts, but one doing bad things.
“When I saw him testify when they had lost $8bn or whatever, the confidence and the hubris and the sense of, also, mea culpa. The guy was so engaging. He wants the camera on him. Supremely confident, even with a loss, a good gambler.” said Gere during the interview.
The financial sector has been strongly criticized globally in recent years for its responsibility in creating the crisis that began in 2008 with the collapse of the U.S. bank Lehman Brothers. As a result of public pressure, political leaders of major economies began to take measures to better regulate the activities of the financial sector, but also to limit the salary packages of heads of financial institutions.
JPMorgan lost over $6.2 billion last year from transactions with financial derivatives at the office in London. One of the traders, Bruno Iksil, blamed for the incident, had accumulated such large positions in the market that has been nicknamed by the competing traders the “London Whale.”
Reply