An Economics outing to the theatre?

Why not – ‘The Power of Yes’ at the National Theatre investigates the cause of the credit crunch and global financial collapse, through the idea that “a dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis”. It’s a series of neatly organised interviews by The Author as central linking character, with some 20 people: bankers, journalists, academics, even George Soros. It offers some explanations – the character of Howard Davies who retired as chairman of the Financial Services Authority in 2003 and is now Director of the LSE defines Quantitative Easing as “…dropping money out of helicopters onto corpses” and some of the causes given for the whole series of events are listed in The Times review as inertia, arrogance, the failure to balance greed with fear of failure, “light touch” regulation, the pressure on every money-man to prove himself the biggest whizz on the block, and a complacent Gordon Brown. A2 students who have spent the last year witnessing the deepening crisis found it illuminating and enjoyable. AS Economists who are just starting to get to grips with the theory of AD/AS analysis found it a bit less easy, but still enjoyed it, and as tickets for schools are a bargain at £12 each for some performances, it was generally agreed to be a rewarding and novel way of extending learning in the subject.

Next outing? In January ‘Enron’, a musical play which “transforms America’s worst corporate scandal into a vivid case-study of greed, folly and deception” and which opened at the Chichester theatre festival in the summer then sold out at the Royal Court moves to the Noel Coward theatre in London.