TLP: Hollywood Shows Wall Street Who Has The Big Swinging Dick
Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
Hollywood may know a thing or two about how Wall Street works after all, regardless of what Shia LeBeouf may think about InterOil. And the movie lobby really seems to know a thing or two about Washington.*
Mother Jones (wait, what? on JDA?):
For weeks, big movie studios have been fighting an effort by two financial firms to launch a new market in movie futures that would allow investors to bet on box office takings. The financial firms think this is an Oscar-worthy scheme. The movie studios panned it. Wall Street is used to getting its way in Washington. But this time, the James Camerons of the world appear to have outsmarted the Gordon Gekkos.
This Capitol Hill clash began with the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX), a fake-money internet game in which players try to predict the box office takes of Hollywood’s biggest flicks. In 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment firm, bought the five-year-old HSX with the intention of perhaps starting a real-money market along the same lines.
Cantor Fitzgerald was nearly wiped out on 9/11 and it wasn’t until 2008 that the firm asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to approve HSX. The OK came this month for HSX and another exchange, Media Derivatives Inc. (MDEX). And that’s when the Motion Picture Association of America lobbyists decided it was time for their close-up.
More Mother Jones:
Cantor Fitzgerald may be a big deal on Wall Street. But it doesn’t have nearly as much pull on the Hill. It hasn’t lobbied the Senate directly since 2002, according to disclosure databases. And while its employees give generously to congressional candidates, it doesn’t have a PAC exclusively promoting its interests. MDEX—an Arizona-based firm started in 2007—is even less of a Washington player.
Hollywood’s lobbying paid off. On April 16, as MDEX executives were no doubt celebrating their good fortune, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) released her draft financial regulatory reform bill. In it, she proposed the first exclusion of a product from futures markets since angry onion farmers descended on Congress in 1958 to accuse Chicago-based traders of capturing the market and artificially driving down prices. The current law lays out rules governing the trade of derivatives of any product "except onions." If Lincoln’s bill passes, it will read "except onions and motion picture box office receipts (or any index, measure, value, or data related to such receipts)."
Looks like Gordon Gekko could take a lesson or two from the MPAA.
*****
See also:
Before We Talk About Anything Else, Let’s Get the Tiny Dick Out of the Way (Then Get to the InterOil Fraud) (Slightly vulgar, but worth reading for the multi-layers of irony)
New Movie: Shia Labeouf Helps Thomas Belesis from John Thomas Financial Pump InterOil, Sam Antar at White Collar Fraud.
Here’s the movie (for the commentary visit Sam’s site):
