And banks typically declined to extend the affordable small loans necessary for homeownership and operating farms.įor decades, working people sought to have the national government make banks safer and loans more accessible. All too frequently, small depositors lost their life's savings in bank failures that resulted from mismanagement and even fraud. Such economic disasters as the Panic of 1907 and the Great Depression exposed the banking system's flaws, inspiring everyday Americans to engage in regular discussions of financial policy and proposed banking reforms. Morgan as a personification of greed than to honor his business achievements.
During the Gilded Age, when working people thought of bankers they envisioned Henry Potter. It's a Wonderful Life may be fiction, yet its release in 1946 registered a half-century long struggle to make banking democratic. "The economic crisis of 2008 led many Americans to consider the degree that their nation has come to look less like Bedford Falls and more like Pottersville." Potter will fund only those projects that produce the most profit for himself, and he has no regard for the impact his decisions have on others. Bailey's bank provides depositors with safety and makes affordable loans available to working people, while Potter's bank focuses solely on benefiting its owner. Bailey's bank is an asset to Bedford Falls, while Potter's bank exploits the community. The figures of Bailey and Potter represent contrasting models for how banking can be conducted. While we often consign the subject of finance to bankers, the annual tradition of watching It's a Wonderful Life serves as an unexpected reminder of just how much power finance exerts over all of our lives. Without Bailey to finance the hopes and aspirations of his neighbors, Potter has created an unrecognizable town that is defined by corruption, slum housing, pawn shops, and seedy bars. On this fateful night, an alternative future is revealed in which Bailey never existed, and his beloved hometown of Bedford Falls has fallen into the clutches of the greedy Henry Potter, owner of the town's largest bank and a man who cares nothing for the public welfare. Yet Bailey is on the brink of committing suicide before discovering just how much his life has meant to the local community.
The film's hero George Bailey is an honest and generous Main Street banker who has helped struggling working people achieve their dreams of homeownership. Among the favorites that are watched year after year, It's a Wonderful Life stands out for stressing the importance of banking to such a society. Christmas movies provide a yearly opportunity to imagine a more caring society.
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