"Engrossing...immensely well-informed overview of the global crash." David Chater, The (London) Times

The program explains how people changed their attitude to risk, learned to live with debt and - above all - how governments stepped back from regulating the system. At the heart of the story is Alan Greenspan, who, for 20 years, was one of the most powerful people in the world. However, in October 2008, weeks after the catastrophic collapse of Lehman Brothers, the man whose ideas influenced the world admitted he just might have been "partially" wrong.

THE AGE OF RISK shows how low interest rates and the economic rise of China left the markets awash in "cheap" money. Banks were also busy inventing new and ever-more risky investment strategies. This, allied with a boom in the US housing market, created a perfect storm that hit in the summer of 2007.

The program looks at whether the holy grail of economics had really been discovered - a risk-free, guaranteed way of making money - or whether it was a time of mass self-delusion as bankers, regulators and politicians looked the other way while the economy headed for financial disaster.

Finally, the film tells the story of Roland Arnall, boss of sub-prime bank Ameriquest. He built a multimillion dollar fortune selling sub-prime mortgages and was appointed by President Bush to be Ambassador to the Netherlands. However, in a cautionary tale for the times, he ended his days dealing with lawsuits and paying out $325 million in an out-of-court settlement in a case over allegations of predatory lending practices.

Contributors include:
Alan Greenspan, former US Federal Reserve Chairman
Professor Harvey Goldschmid, former Commissioner of the US Securities and Exchange Commission
Robert Reich, Labor Secretary under President Clinton
Al Hubbard, former Director of National Economic Council under President George W. Bush
Dr. Manley Johnson, former Vice Chair of the US Federal Reserve
Dr. Gerry Corrigan, former Chair of New York Federal Reserve
Gordon Brown MP, UK Prime Minister
Henry Waxman, (D-CA)
Barney Frank (D-MA)
Len Bole, Expert in Risk Management
John Thain, former CEO, Merrill Lynch
Peter Meinertzhagen, former Chairman, ABN Amro, Hoare Govett
Dr. Nouriel Roubini, NYU Economist
Gillian Tett, assistant editor of the Financial Times, winner of the 2009 Spear Awards' Financial Book of the Year for Fool's Gold
Professor Robert Shiller, Economist
Paul Muolo, Journalist
Professor Frank Trentmann, Cultural Historian
Jerome Tuccille, Biographer of Alan Greenspan
Robert Gnaizda, Sub-prime Advocate
Kenneth Clarke MP, former UK Chancellor
Lord Lawson, former UK Chancellor.

The other programs in the series are:

1. The Bank that Bust the World - The first film in the BBC series, THE LOVE OF MONEY, examines what happened in September 2008 when the collapse of Lehman Brothers plunged the world into financial crisis.

3. Back from the Brink - The third film in the BBC series, THE LOVE OF MONEY, examines the background to the decision to bail out the banks in 2008.



Grade Level: 10 - 12, College, Adults
US Release Date: 2010     Copyright Date: 2009
DVD ISBN: 1-59458-935-6

Reviews "The Age of Risk is an excellent summary of what has become a complicated set of events. Two decades worth of financial globalization in which excessive greed became virtually normative at many financial institutions. While events such as the rise of China, financial de-regulation and increasingly novel financial products vastly increased the velocity of transaction and productivity of financial services, it was the growth of a culture of massive individual enrichment that was the glue that held this all together." Ian Taplin, Professor of Sociology, Management and International Studies, Wake Forest University "This positively brilliant documentary offers a sobering realization of precisely how close to the brink of disaster the world economy came...The unrelenting revelations of this film...the outright horror, shock, and outrage that are generated by this documentary series is undeniable...This series is a truly a 'must see.' The film is promoted as 'the definitive guide to the global economic meltdown.' This is no exaggeration, and is indeed a well deserved tagline." Michael Coffta, Business Librarian, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Educational Media Reviews Online "Addresses the real causes of the crisis." Vance Gieger, University of Central Florida, Anthropology Review Database "The Love of Money was a meticulous countdown to disaster, its clarity and the colossal scale of the facts and figures making it vastly more compelling than the dramatisation a few nights ago... the story unfolded largely in the words of those who were there, with the occasional addition from the narrator to make sure we were following through the still relatively unfamiliar terrain of shrunken multi-billion portfolios, balance sheets, liquidity guarantees and the horrors revealed wherever potential investors and their due diligence teams trod." Lucy Mangan, The Guardian "A vivid, fascinating account of the crisis...Those directly involved recall the frenzied, round-the-clock attempts to save the firm [Lehmans], amid `the smell of pizza and unwashed bodies'." Daily Mail "Over the last three weeks we have been treated to the sight of what it [the BBC] undeniably does best: making serious documentaries about events of great public importance...The programme-makers did an excellent job. Apart from lining up many of the major players in the world's economic near-collapse...it explained both what had happened and the consequences if the banks had been allowed to fold...For all the cold-blooded analysis, you didn't hear many...participants admitting the whole mess had been partly of their own making, and nor were you satisfied it couldn't happen all over again...There was also some telling insight into the impact on the relationships between countries, with Britain, Ireland and France all throwing barbed remarks." Virginia Blackburn, Daily Express