Sarah Sands: Banking needs to learn from Wolf’s sorry tale

Leonardo DiCaprio's Oscar nod is an awkward film for the City. The Wolf of Wall Street is fantastic and grotesque, but not at all isolated
Allstar
21 January 2014
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Complaints that The Wolf of Wall Street is too celebratory look off the mark to me. It is no more glamorous than Dante’s Inferno. Call me a Methodist but I did not envy a single thing about the material success of the film’s “hero” Jordan Belfort, played by Leonardo Di-Caprio. His riches bring marital misery, drug addiction, terror and even calamitous storms. His car is a write-off and his boat and helicopter are destroyed. It is an old-fashioned morality tale, although an entertaining one. Remember, Faust had his good times too.

The forces of good prevail inexorably and symmetrically. The very funny scene at the start when DiCaprio learns the broker’s anthem from his boss, played by Matthew McConaughey, is balanced by the later one in which the uncorrupted FBI agents come for Belfort on his yacht. He was never going to get away with it.

As for DiCaprio, he seems to have wrapped up his career in this role. There are echoes of Titanic, Catch Me If You Can and The Great Gatsby but with a new power and range. No one plays charismatic chancers better.

This is an awkward film for the City. DiCaprio’s character is fantastic and grotesque but not isolated. When the FBI interview him he asks why they are not looking at the junk being sold in Wall Street. Belfort would have been recognisable to Dick “the Gorilla” Fuld from Lehman Brothers, another salesman and motivator who was captured on a staff video threatening to “rip the hearts out” (of short sellers) “and eat it before they die”. The film Margin Call, with its shades of Lehman Brothers, strikes me still as a more deadly epitaph on financial institutions than this one.

The Wolf of Wall Street reminds us what happened in the Eighties and the Nineties. It is what the former Fed head Alan Greenspan called “irrational exuberance” and Belfort called “mainlining adrenaline”. History can repeat itself.

I hope Davos will champion a new philosophy of banking. Barclays, for instance, has been working with Care International on a charter for bottom- up responsible credit in emerging economies. This is based on Care’s innovation of Village Savings and Loans Associations — in effect, community banks. Barclays underwrote the scheme, paying for financial advice and administration. Now the idea is to scale it up and to look at new partners among large banks and financial institutions.

Barclays says its motive for this is good citizenship. The Wolf of Wall Street shows how unmoored from good citizenship the banking culture became. The village saving and loans schemes I saw in Uganda last year were a searing rebuke. A convert to VSL is former Barclays head Bob Diamond. Let’s hope an era of innocent banking can prevail. It would be terrible to think of the lamb having to live with the wolf.

Runaways can enjoy the life of Riley these days

It took a little time to catch up with Edward Bunyan and Indira Gainiyeva, the public school runaways who took off to the Dominican Republic because they found Stonyhurst College in Lancashire unexpectedly cold at this time of year.

I would not dream of suggesting that the police and members of the press in hot pursuit of the couple were enjoying their assignment. They followed the trail assiduously across bars and pools and spas of five-star hotels. It is just that I cannot see any obvious victims apart from anxious parents.

Runaways: Edward Bunyan and Indira Gainiyeva (Pictures: Facebook)

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The young couple were compared by schoolmates to Bonnie and Clyde, the American outlaws, and to Romeo and Juliet, but it was always going to be a happier ending. What the mini-saga shows is the changing face of the UK’s private education system. It is a long time since Jennings and Darbishire ran away to the village shop and were gravely punished.

The rich international set is more travelled and less tolerant of underheated dormitories and term dates. Caribbean holidays are a human right whereas school is an option.

A relative of Bunyan made the obvious point that “it wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t have money to spend”. He who holds the credit card makes the rules.

A simple path to progress

Last night I watched Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand who is now running the United Nations Development Programme, give the Women of the Year Lecture.

She covered the state of the world and the advancement of women, the two subjects being intimately linked. Treat girls better, don’t abort them or mutilate them, instead educate and empower them, and national fortunes will rise.

Avoid war and conflict — Syria has been set back by about 35 years. The secret of success is simple, but not easy.

Calm after the Ukip storm

We are set for a cool, dry spell. Climate scientists say a warm current in the North Atlantic is slowing down, affecting summer temperatures. Another explanation might be worth trying on Ukip councillors. What if God is satisfied at last with us. Watch out for the release of doves.

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