Blogging By Cinema-light: Don't Make a Scene: The Laundromat

The Story: Two grifters explain basic economy to you.

And not just money. The absence of money. Who knew that the absence of money was just as important as money? As happens every ten years or so, the American economy goes through some sort of slump, so if you want to save for a rainy day, you'd better have a lot of money or a good meteorologist. Because in order to keep the gears going, you need money. Absent that, you need the promise of money. Which isn't real and promises can be broken.

And so can economic systems. And governments. Ways of life.

All for something that isn't real. Really.

Steve Soderbergh's The Laundromat is one of those rarities—an anthology film—inspired by the revelations of The Panama Papers, documents leaked by a whistleblower showing the invisible strings of promises and absent money all funneled through a business address which was just a mail-box for 214,000 shell companies to avoid taxes and governmental sanctions. I'm sure there's a lot of Russian money going though the eyes of such loop-holes right now.

But, the true lesson of economy is value. Nothing is worth anything unless it is valued, be it money, bit-coin, oil paintings, luxury cars, even movies. Without gold backing it up, money is just paper. And coins? Just minerals without the gold hiding behind it.

And our tour-guides here, Jürgen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca, they're real people (portrayed by actors, who metaphorically leave destruction in their wake), who quite blithely made a mint...until they got caught. So, what they have to say may be of some value.

Or, perhaps, it isn't worth anything.

The Set-up: There is no set-up. This is the start of the movie. In fact, you could say this is the set-up itself. And now, here are your guides, Jürgen Mossack (Gary Oldman) and Ramón Fonseca (Antonio Banderas), both formerly of the firm Mossack Fonseca.

Jürgen Mossack: First of all, there are some things you should know before we begin. For instance, we are real people, just like you.

Ramón Fonseca: Secondly, we did not write a word of this. To be perfectly frank, we would have preferred all of this remain a secret.
Jürgen Mossack: But we had no choice in the matter. We just woke up one day and everything changed.

Ramón Fonseca: There were stories about us everywhere: TV, newspapers, and the internet.

Jürgen Mossack: And now it is our turn to tell a few stories. Think of them as fairy tales that actually happened.

Ramón Fonseca: Don't worry, these stories are not just about us. They're also about you.

Jürgen Mossack: And how is that possible?

Ramón Fonseca: Because all these stories are about money.

Jürgen Mossack: The idea of money. The necessity of money. The secret life of money.

Ramón Fonseca: Before money, there was only the barter system. You tried to trade what you had or you could do for what you needed. You have bananas, but you need a cow.

Ramón Fonseca: I have a cow, but I hate bananas. So, as you can imagine, there was a limit to this system. Bananas turn brown over time and cows can, you know, wander away.

Ramón Fonseca: So an agreed-upon medium of exchange was needed.

Jürgen Mossack: What is a medium of exchange? Well, it could be a... a nugget of gold.

Jürgen Mossack: Or some other shiny rocks that are generally found to be scarce. It could be a...

a slip of paper - with words on it... - Aah! Or pictures of powerful people.

And if you read those words, you will see that they are arranged into a promise of value.

Jürgen's cell phone pings

Ramón Fonseca: Slips of paper...

Ramón Fonseca: Which you cannot peel and eat, and do not give milk are what we all agreed to call "money."

Ramón Fonseca: And these slips gave birth to many other pieces of paper with more writing on them.

Jürgen Mossack: And some of those words, they told the story of credit.

Ramón Fonseca: Oh, stay with us now, this is important.

Jürgen Mossack: Credit is an invention that meant you no longer needed to carry around, uh, millions of bananas on slips of paper.
Ramón Fonseca: So, you now have something invisible, credit,