There are an awful lot of TV shows about murder. I am on
record here as loving Masterpiece Mystery,
and they’re almost all about solving murders. They’re great shows, and as people do get
murdered and everything in real life, they're fascinating to us; but I think it’s really a shame that a bit more time
is not spent on other crimes, like for example, financial crimes. Aren’t they much more relevant these days anyway, what with the financial crash and stuff?
Look, I think after years of CSI and its clones, we all know how much semen to expect
to find on someone, or what kind of screwdriver would make so-and-so a shape in
some corpse, etc. But still, nobody seems to understand the financial system
well enough to know when shady deals are going down to lose someone’s life
savings, causing their suicide. All I’m saying is, if TV writers, directors,
actors, etc., can keep us riveted for an hour each week to follow the murder
investigation into someone we’ve never even heard of before, then surely they
can figure out a way to make it fascinating to teach us about financial crimes,
right?
How about this: Law & Order: F. U. (Financial Unit)? Or what about CSI: F.U.? Each week they could have some incident that ends
up in a death, a suicide, or some globe-trotting chase, and it would all be
based upon sketchy investor fraud, derivatives trading, etc. If they could make
it as fascinating as a murder investigation (and you know they could do it if
they wanted to!), we’d all tune in, week after week, and as it progressed
along, we would all become expert in financial terminology and how the
investment stuff all works. It would be good for everyone (except for shyster
investors), so we’d all win, and we’d become stronger as a nation. And after
all, when was the last time watching NCIS helped you solve a real murder? But this might help you avoid getting
ripped off, or else catch some scam before it harms anyone.
We hear a lot about this issue, so why can’t the
entertainment people make it seem exciting? If a heist movie is exciting, or a
murder mystery, then why not the mystery of what happened to so-and-so’s
pension fund that caused them to jump out of a high-rise window to their
untimely death? It could be just like CSI,
but with some high-finance lesson stuff in there where all the usual DNA
claptrap would normally be. And isn’t all that science stuff about the same,
anyway? So what’s the difference? Plus, they could have stuff like chalk
outlines around the missing money, techno disco music playing while they do
financial forensics, etc. What’s not to love?
