The Morality of Banking in It’s an excellent life
The 1946 classic touches on financial themes that remain painfully relevant in addition to its holiday cheesiness and religious moralizing.
Seventy years as a result of its launch, Frank Capra’s It’s A wonderful life continues to be a vacation classic, with hot and fuzzy communications in regards to the significance of love and household. However the movie’s plot also touches on some still-relevant economic subjects, like the nature of banking, the philosophical calculus behind issuing loans, in addition to method American families’ monetary fates are connected (and, we swear, we aren’t simply stating that because the two of us occur to report on company and economics during the Atlantic).
The film’s protagonist, George Bailey, offers up their goals of traveling the entire world to operate Bailey Building and Loan, a little community bank with home financing company. But all isn’t well in Bedford Falls. The decisions for the well-intentioned Bailey as he faces a regrettable deposit-envelope mix-up and attempts to fight an aggressive tycoon lead to a clear-cut narrative set piece, but in addition, whether Capra designed to or perhaps not, result in the film financially instructive every one of these years later on.
Below is a discussion we had after (re-)watching the movie in regards to the different concerns it does increase about mortgages, banking, and economic solvency.
Gillian B. White: we forgot just how much commentary here is in this film concerning the economics of exactly exactly exactly how banking institutions and loans work. I’d like a file that is audio of Bailey saying “The money’s not here!” while he attempts to explain exactly just just how deposits have rolled into other items, not only piles of bills saved in a vault. But Everyone loves that message for the next explanation, too: it will help explain, at a fairly simple level, exactly how deeply interwoven America’s banking structure and funds can be—so whenever a bank, big or tiny, fails, a lot of people ramp up experiencing the effect.