The Cold Wind: A Financial Western

The Wild West was synonymous strong men and beautiful women, violence, danger and, above all, gold. This is where people came to make their fortune. Get rich, or work for someone who is. Capital was amassed while brutality lurked everywhere. But there was no legal grey area; the law protected owners and no one else. In a small gold rush town in the middle of nowhere, progress begins seeping in from outside, with the railway tracks almost reaching the town’s borders and its natural resources dwindling. Given the circumstances, the obvious thing to do is to found a bank. Why anxiously monitor the price of gold today when you can bet on its price tomorrow? What’s the point of trading goods when trade itself has become an item that’s bought and sold? But it’s not long until resistance emerges to this full-on economization of society. Even the local loan shark is against it. And who is the mysterious stranger living in a room above the saloon and who seems to be following his own agenda? Circumstances begin to shift around fluidly, as do the discourses amidst a richly fertile interplay of cinematic references and economic theory set in the dusty streets of the Wild West that saw the birth of modern finance capitalism. And as with all classic Westerns, everything climaxes in a dramatic confrontation…