Possessed of an evident interest in finance and maybe a free afternoon this festive season, there’s a good chance you, dear reader, will soon be sitting down to watch It’s a Wonderful Life.
It might not be the greatest Christmas film about banking (see Trading Places), but the 1946 picture about George Bailey, a man who parks his ambitions to help others and run his family’s mutual association, remains irresistibly charming. It is also a brilliant, if slightly rose-tinted, vision of finance as a force for good.
In the film, the force in question is the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan, a type of lender that was a popular alternative to banks in America in the early decades of the 20th century. While similar in philosophy to today’s building societies, their key feature required mortgage borrowers to both pay interest and buy shares in the mutual itself to repay the principal.