The Mayfair Set (1999) User Reviews

It will make you furious what the market is doing

[haasxaar · 10/10 · 24 September 2008]

At the end of this film I was of bemusement at the unreported and almost unseen approach that capital and capital markets have taken since 1945 to gradually take control of the political systems of the USA and the United Kingdom. Curtis outlines several key points and analyses at great length various events and personalities.

These so called market movers were all members of the Clermont Club in Mayfair, London. What at first seemed to be an audacious and unrealistic strategy to take control of the market economy turned into something almost unstoppable, destructive, cruel and completely bereft of feeling or scruple.

What is so shocking is that the corruption and immorality did not start as commonly assumed in the 1980's with the ascent of Reagan and Thatcher to power but with the beginning of the global economy in the late 1950s. There is much material shown here that should be much more discussed and explained because it depicts aptly how moribund and fragile the economies of the developed world have become. How they are built up on tenuous and shallow assumptions that market cycles are no longer applicable. The greed and deception of the business elite reaches far further and far wider than beyond anyone's common knowledge or understanding of politics.

Watch this. Be informed. Be scared.

how markets came to power

[Andres-Kurismaa-1 · 10/10 · 20 October 2007]

This is a series of 4 short films about the decline of political power and the rise of capital as source of legitimacy in its own right and the main inspiration for decisions shaping of our world. Below is a short summary of its first part, which probably has elements least known, yet deserving all the more attention for that.

Beginning in the in post-war England, we're shown how a small group of people launch their private government approved projects of intervention into foreign affairs, dedicated to the task of re-ascertaining British failing political power and influence in the world. Such was the stepping into the conflict over oil between Yemen and Egipt, where the founder of British elite force Special Air Service (SAS) David Stirling headed a private sort of war with his ex-servicemen to secure continued access to one of the important economic resources for England in a time when the country's official politics drew increasingly back from such „world policing" kind of affairs. The success of his mission got the Saudies interested in similar services, and soon after other leaders of counties in the developing world also had Brits as their military advisers, heads of security etc. – of course in case Stirling and other aristocrats (of the „Watchguard") approve of the country's political orientation. If so, then armed forces and leadership would be provided when for instance necessary to fight off internal communist resistance or other revolutionary destabilizing forces. (This is of course much the same America had been doing since WW II thru CIA). But what seemed to have begun largely as an ideological crusade, turned into a rather compromised form of foreign policy, with arms deals as the main leverage point to foreign influence, and the British economy becoming hooked up in cases of corruption – the major but bribed weapons deals (a whole air force in fact, which was the single biggest export deal in British history) with Saudi Arabia being an example... How all this was part of the process of changing relations between political and economic interests is shown.

In the second series is told the story of England's changing economic structure form a quite different, but related angle – the emergence of tycoons like Slater and Goldsmith, who started to take over the traditional companies and industries of England, buying them up and tearing them down in a campaign of „liberating the market". Next, in the third series, Curtis explores how the same trend moved to the States (with Goldsmith again playing a role) and what forms it took there – and where it similarly to England did not have only (if any, one might probably ask) desirable and foreseeable consequences of course, as even the tycoons themselves had to realize – the forces they had unleashed in the free market economy were running out of control, there was nothing they nor the governments could do about it, even if they tried.

Curtis is a pure genius in bringing all these things together in a single piece of sophisticated, very well informed and articulated narration.Not boring for a single minute, though at times perhaps a bit complicated for anyone not too familiar with one or another aspect of what he discusses, as I have to admit (economic theories, in relation to history and politics). The interviews with participants in the events brought to us are very interesting, just like the footage that he manages to find is excellent - and only gets better with his later series, so don't miss them as well. 10/10, as usual for this author.

The Takeover Tycoons

[Goingbegging · 6/10 · 6 May 2017]

Anyone who thought they understood finance in 1970 would soon be badly wrong-footed, unless their name was Goldsmith, Slater or Rowland. The whole relationship between governments, stock-markets, banks and shareholders simply went into ragtime, and it hasn't stopped yet.

This 4-part study attempts to rationalise it for the humble layman, but it doesn't really chime as a satisfying quartet. Part 1 seems somewhat off-topic, mostly to do with a demobbed colonel lamenting the end of empire. Part 2 ('Entrepreneur Spelt S.P.I.V.') is the one that actually gets to the guts of the problem - Jim Slater and the asset-stripping revolution, soon copied by 'Tiny' Rowland in Africa. Part 3 is concerned with Reaganomics and junk-bonds, which all gets a bit technical for me. And Part 4 is a gloomy tale of the old tycoons when they've outlived their glory days.

The subject is really too broad for a short series like this. For example, the umbrella-title 'The Mayfair Set' refers to the Clermont Club in its splendid Palladian town-house in Berkeley Square, and the venue alone would have justified a 1-hour documentary. In this context, for example, we get one glimpse of Lord ('Lucky') Lucan, with no mention of the sensational murder case in which both he and the club were so intimately involved.

Quite fun to listen to various tycoons complaining about corrupt habits that they themselves had largely introduced into the system. Perhaps a little sad to hear about Goldsmith succumbing to apocalyptic visions, which clearly reflected his own approaching demise. And there is an ironic ending, with Jim Slater recalling boyhood games of Monopoly, where he selected the best properties to buy, according to how far they were from the 'Go to Jail' square!