PRINCES OF THE YEN
Documentary of Central Banking Digital Economy
Director: Michael Oswald
Protagonist: Richard Werner
Narrator: Andrew Piper
Noriko Yamagiwa
Set in 20th Century Japan the documentary explores the role and power of Central Banks and how they can be used to change a country’s economic political and social structures A documentary adaption off the book by Professor Richard Werner.
Central Banks are some of the most secretive and misunderstood institutions in the world. What powers do they wield? Whose interests do they serve? How do their actions affect our everyday lives? In 2003, Richard Werner released a book by the title of “Princes of the Yen”, which cut through the complex jargon of central bankers and for the first time made this obscure world accessible to the public. The book became a number one bestseller in Japan. Yet, over ten years after it was first released, the English version, is still on its first edition! Told within the context of the history of 20th Century Japan, Richard Werner meticulously solves the puzzle of central banks, and explains the social, political and economic impacts their actions have. The documentary provides the viewer with a new understanding of economics and shows how events that may appear disjointed in popular discourse are in reality intimately intertwined. “Princes of the Yen” is an independent, self-funded documentary. It was made as a sequel to 97% Owned, a film about how money is created and the impact its creation has. We realized after making that film that we did not understand how central banks fitted into the picture. “Princes of the Yen” fills that gap, shining a light on a world hidden behind closed doors and obscured by complex jargon, a world which would much rather stay out of sight. And when all the layers are peeled away, what remains, is the understanding of the role central banks play, in inducing and directing change. Change, for which they have no mandate. —Mike Horwath
Richard Werner is a German economist who specialised in the Japanese economy, and eventually wrote a very well-received book called Princes of the Yen: Japan’s Central Bankers and the Transformation of the Economy which traced the development of the economy in Japan in the post-war years, and showed how the Central Bank of Japan created a crisis in what was a well-functioning economy in order to institute structural change leading to the independence of the Central Bank itself.
This film is basically readings from that book retracing the story, with occasional recordings of Werner on contemporary TV and talk shows, and shows how this model of crisis creation was duplicated in other economies around the world in order to produce outcomes that were basically political in scope. Countries such as South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia all had similar pressures placed on them.
A main mover in these structural reforms has been the American model of a so-called ‘free market’, and world bodies like the International Monetary Fund which has been implementing US policy around the world. The film also warns about the Central Bank of Europe, which has similar powers and has been undermining local economies in Europe.
Richard Werner & Taylor Hudak | NARRATIVE by Robert Cibis #112