Money certainly doesn’t grow on trees but what would you do if ceased to exist? In episode 2 of Wall & Broadcast, we look inside a state penitentiary where the use of US currency is forbidden but a secret economic system has taken hold. And we visit a country where the official currency has failed to see how people respond when the money they’ve come to rely on becomes worthless. In the process we discover that, in addition to love, there is one thing that money still can’t buy...
There’s an undercurrent in our mainstream culture today, a prevailing sense that our financial markets are rigged. This zeitgeist has existed very strongly since the crash of 2007/08. Some may know very little about how the markets operate and yet they tend to harbor at least a seed of doubt; ‘maybe the markets are rigged – I would believe it if they were.’ Others, who are more fluent in the language of the markets - for example, a hugely popular former presidential candidate, a best selling author, various politicians and regulators, even many market participants themselves - say regularly and emphatically that the markets are rigged or at least that they constitute an un-level playing field. We wanted make sense of this question and see whether there’s a clear answer…