And when fantasy finance crashes, which it always does, we pay the tab.
Bob Yari financed "Crash" but did not get a producer credit on the Oscar ballot, and when the film won for best picture in 2006, he sued the Producers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to get the credit.
Mr. Darling had to demonstrate that although he might be associated with the problem — Britain's finances crashed under the Labour government for which he works, and which has been in power for 13 years — he is in fact part of the solution.
Two things are needed to avoid a climate finance car crash.
In testimony before a Congressional subcommittee recently, Dr. Martin S. Hirsch, an infectious disease specialist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, called for the Government to finance "a crash program" of scientifically controlled trials of several drugs at several medical centers under the direction of the National Institutes of Health.
Many who don't feel confident about their finances feel high stress and set budgets out of fear that their finances will crash.
But compared to yesteryear's carnival showman Bill Veeck (Cleveland Indians), the tyrannical Charlie Comiskey (Chicago White Sox) and civic saboteurs like Walter O'Malley (Brooklyn and LA Dodgers), today's owners are amoral Godzillas in the same rogues' gallery as the geniuses at Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Countrywide Finance who crashed our economic system – capitalism run amok.
And on Wednesday, Mr. Yari, who put together the $7 million in financing for "Crash," took out full-page advertisements in Hollywood's trade papers with a ringing call to uphold justice and due process by abolishing the secret panels that award credit for best picture.
When unsustainable growth in housing prices began to stall and then reverse, the whole edifice of fantasy finance came crashing down with it.
As the world of finance came crashing down four years ago, aggregate losses on Wall Street and in the banking sector totaled in the trillions, exceeding the combined profitability of the industry over the previous century.
