Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape.
What was the greatest wealth-creating film of all time? Titanic might be a popular guess, but the answer, according to Robert Mundell, Columbia University’s Nobel laureate economist, is Taxi Driver .
The 1976 classic, directed by Martin Scorsese with Robert De Niro (…) introduced a young Jodie Foster. But what does it have to do with the world economy?
John Hinckley, the deranged would-be assassin who attempted to kill US president Ronald Reagan in 1981, claimed that he was inspired by it. He said that his action was an attempt to impress Foster. (The movie features a scene in which a mohawked De Niro attempts to assassinate a politician.)
According to Mundell, the wave of sympathy for Reagan that was engendered by the assassination attempt deterred Democrats in Congress from voting against his proposed tax cuts. Because of this accident of history, the US administered a big fiscal stimulus at the same time that Paul Volcker at the Federal Reserve was administering tight money. This, for Mundell, was vital in creating the era of prosperity that followed.
{ Financial Times }
