Stupid today on made well be examining a range of illusions in the economy im chris colfer welcome to the show now one big illusion that drives people in business is the notion that you can make a fast buck for a little work if someone promises that you should be suspicious my colleague went undercover to examine the world of multilevel marketing which has often been criticized as a pyramid scheme. Or. Sounds pretty cool the whole thing cost me 86650. 00 euros capital and ive never met anybody whos taken out more money than they paid in multilevel or Network Marketing 1st time i heard of it was because a good friend who had go involved with it and tried to sell me lets say some funny stuff. And it goes like this you become an independent seller of a product weight loss shakes make up of Financial Products just about anything goes plus you can make money by bringing people into the system you earn a percentage of their sales too but of course this cant go on forever every member recruits 5 new people they in turn recruit 5 new people after 14 times there will be more people in the system than in the entire world. While im researching this i come across masses of office like these its always about making a lot of money without really having to do very much also always important bringing in other people and then i come across an offer where the software makes the money for me. So i can trade in the currency markets even if i have no idea of what im actually doing. The training is basically you betting that one currency will go up against another one its extremely high risk you can win a lot of money quite fast but you can just as quick. As the video tries to persuade me that the software will work automatically for me with amazing returns. I want to know more how do these people work the 1st step is not to blow my cover i create a fake profile. I travel to vienna to meet the marketers ive only seen online up to now. Quickly i get ready the camera and im on the cover i am totally nervous at the event in a small hotel for year i see extremely young people and. No only in the audience the guy who wants to sell me the Trading Software is only 18 years old im supposed to pay 250. 00 for the 1st month to use the software and again he reminds me whats kind of profits are possible here. And i keep getting it drummed into me recommendations in other words Network Marketing mean even more income and that its totally easy to sell the software. There is. This group. True or. This from what you have these 18 year olds like all stage tell you all about 40 extra you can make a 20 percent yield in one month which is obviously. Crazy. But they still seem to get people into making money off of it which is even crazy. Attorney Patrick Wilson confirms my doubts small trades often work but the big money is quickly gone. And i havent met a Single Person who ended up making more money than they put in if it wasnt a stupid coincidence and then its only a matter of sams like someone deposited 500 euros and got back 800. And of course thats a small price to pay if it gets you someone who invests 100000 euros and loses all of it to. The European Supervisory Authority says almost all small investors lose often several 1000 euros of course thats nowhere to be seen in these presentations. It takes a long time to find someone who is willing to talk to me about his loss just before we finish filming i travel to see him i want to hear his story. The man wants to remain anonymous only 3 of his friends know that he has lost 87000 euros in the beginning he was very excited about the software. I would say is just pure euphoria. Finally you have a chance with stocks. Youve always heard about things like stocks. Where you can make a lot of money very quickly. These people are trained. They unlock even more hype and enthusiasm so that you can hardly escape. He bought money from his friends to do it soon it was all gone my children all turned 18 around that time they wanted cars wanted a vacation graduated from high school and so on they went to university and i simply could not support them it just wasnt possible. This has happened many times some 200000 cases have been reported in germany alone i want to know from the network as in vienna why they do not provide precise loss figures as the e. U. Requires after repeated inquiries i get an answer and surprisingly. The disclaimer has been checked by a lawyer and covers everything it points out that investors risk losing part or all of their initial capital. But it doesnt say that the vast majority of people lose their money. Obviously these guys from vienna on straight up criminals there this claim but theyve also shown as these accounts with 20 percent yields their fancy cars theyre just some are selling a tree and thats definitely not for me i like to know where my money is all the time and how quickly i can access it if you are interested in this sort of trading i recommend going to your bank and getting some advise thats a whole lot safer than giving your money to someone you just met on social media. Sounds about right so what makes so many of us susceptible to dubious money making schemes well we tend to focus on how we would like things to turn out rather than inconvenient facts now to distinguish between illusion and reality we have to use our common sense as the ancient greek philosopher plato showed that can be difficult. What our economic illusions. Imagine we spend our whole life tied up in a cave in front of us is a big wall on which we see figures passing by but they are mere shadows of things moving in front of the fire. We believe its reality but its an illusion platos cave the allegory by the ancient greek philosopher is still valid today. Politicians entrepreneur and consumers can fall victim to illusions misunderstanding or misinterpreting reality. In the 1950 s. The soviet union aimed to overtake the us economy among other things its plan called for communist corn that was twice as large as capitalist corn but the plan fell apart due to crop failures and unwieldy. The victory of socialism proved to be an illusion. Illusions also took root in the west for example youre going to shrimps vision in 1998 was to turn the maker of mercedes cars into a Global Automobile company so he merged dima benz with u. S. Car maker chrysler celebrating it as a match made in heaven. But the 2 companys culture and philosophy were completely incompatible the project failed ultimately at a cost of around 40000000000. 00 euros the vision to be an expensive illusion. And consumers believe their diesels were environmentally friendly intil it turned out that emissions test said been manipulated and the vehicles polluted bunch more than was claimed im a loser driven by fraud. And how about the rest of us honestly we love illusions at least at 1st nothing pulls us in like a well made illusion. Advertising consumption Financial Markets a large part of the economy is based on illusions. Today we sit in our caves or at least in front of our screens voluntarily but before our illusions shatter wed better leave the cave and seek out reality. Well sometimes we want to escape reality and what industry helps us do that better than the movie because its raw is on the lucians and today Digital Technology can create a Perfect Illusion of reality gone are the days when an actor was stuffed into a good sailor costume to bring terror to makeshift cardboard cities just look at the Science Fiction film avatar its fascinating and the company right here in berlin is among the leaders in the 3 d. Animation technique and we put the focus of his. Music video in the make. The computer is simultaneously transferring the movement of the dancers to a digital character the technical director oversees everything interrupting and readjusting until all the scenes are finished be careful what you do with your fingers know. That the gray sensors mounted to the dancers suits are especially important they cant slip or shift 3 d. Cameras on the ceiling capture the movement of the sensors and send. Data to the software. You have here 2 different system the motion the body motion capture which is done from an optical system call up to truck so its trucking these heroes that we velcro onto his skin this is a completely separate system this is official system with a device we can use a phone or any camera whatsoever and we are actually capturing the expression on his face. The client is a d. J. Who is hoping to hit the charts with his song the d. J. s face and body will later be superimposed onto the robot step by step the result it will look like the d. J. Himself is dancing. With motion capture you can create doubles that are deceptively real here for example with kluge plus one the pop singer is long deceased but his avatar has hit the pop charts but said. That. They make productions is an Animation Studio based in berlin and most of the 20 employees are 3 d. Artists the couple have my only flynn and David Bennett run the place in 2009 but it worked on the Ground Breaking hollywood blockbuster avatar bringing the humanoid species navi to life it felt like that was the 1st time that the whole system really worked with facial expressions on such a big scale when we were working on it we just really had no idea how big that movie was going to be because of the time consuming postproduction motion capture ends up being more costly than normal productions but there are exceptions for example that youre working with a celebrity and theyre charging how many thousands per minute theyre on said if you dont have to work with their physical time and you instead have their character it can be done much cheaper using the sensors or my any flynn created a 3 d. Avatar of herself it was revealed her double can speak at conferences simultaneously the avatar will take on the facial expressions of the speaker. And scrunch my face. Distinguishing between reality and fiction is becoming more and more difficult some may find that frightening but flynn isnt worried the people that are most astonished are my parents you know they keep asking me if i shaved my head and i might know its not me. I think its the people who are knowing me and can see me in my digital double i think that always gives them a surprise. Their projects range from a hologram for a commercial with football star neymar. Animating batman in and then most successful computer game in the world. To helping artist jeff koons translate one of his iconic sculptures into a moving ballerina. Theres a kind of a consciousness to the world where people are starting to realize the potential for them and theyre getting affordable now. Animation technology and motion capture are developing in leaps and bounds the business with illusions can only get stronger. Ok so hollywood can make anything look real and we delight in this deception but the downside is that we are vulnerable to manipulated images just think propaganda misinformation luckily there isnt an area thats free of illusions hard data Economic Indicators such as g. D. P. Which measures the value of goods and services produced in a country surely numbers like that are real and meaningful well maybe. The Gross Domestic Product i know that doesnt sound so interesting but it is seen as the most important indicator of our wealth but what if g. D. P. Is no longer relevant in our. Globalized world. Misconception. Lets take island for example in 2015 the Irish Economy grew by 26 percent i think its 26 percent and the reason for that is right well. And. Globalization made it possible in that he transferred its intellectual Property Rights to a subsidiary an island as a way of avoiding tech sation after the sales of apple products no matter where in the world are reflected in islands g. D. P. But despite the massive increase of People Living on the island i would be hard pressed to say how they have benefited in g. D. P. At the same time toplessness in the country went down by only 1. 5 percent and higher tax revenues didnt materialize as apple and other multinationals used loopholes to avoid Corporate Tax and while islands g. D. P. Increased to 2 Foreign Tech Companies the effect of those companies causes it to fall in other places. Keyword digitalisation take the music industry. Now it can listen to all the music i want using cheap streaming services in the past i spend a lot of money on c. D. s and cd players so now im saving money but what im doing has a negative impact on my countrys g. D. P. So its g. D. P. Its to look at that in the case where. Question to the organization for Economic Cooperation and development the o. E. C. D. In paris which helped make up the rules for measuring g. D. P. Its always been wrong to only use g. D. P. For policy decisions thats always been the case i mean its one Macro Economic indicator what we had in todays concept of g. D. P. Is there are lots of transactions that you as a consumer benefit from that are not in the Economic System because theyre free but you derive value from them so you think there must be something wrong because im getting all this utility all this value from something that isnt being recorded in conventional g. D. P. Statistics and as we saw advancing digitalisation and globalization makes it increasingly difficult to measure the countries real economy. A challenge and how much g. D. P. Was generated by an economic entity that has no reporting mechanism in my country its possible question so let me just be clear i mean its not the wrong measure for measurement or for policymaking its just not a measure that should be used in isolation the changes in the modern world are a challenge to statistics like not. Making g. D. P. Less and less of a mirror of the real economy so its g. D. P. An illusion well know. That its no longer useful as a sole indicator for decisions that the fact. Well some decisions that had very real impact on peoples lives were the ones that left to the financial crisis of 2008 Karen Anderson gave people a glimpse of a reality many had known about its best selling book city boy its an insiders account of the heady days of banking in london featuring reckless trading 6 figure bonuses and cocaine fueled. Until everything went belly up a decade later our correspondent barry moss met up with. Put 12 years he was one of them then he turned against his former colleagues and published a book on green in the city of london. Garrett anderson the film a utilities analyst with some of europes biggest banks in this place was populated by gamblers who took big risks who were thinking short and who didnt really care about the consequences their actions. This is one of the many places i see come back in the day we have 34 hour lunches and maybe theres a bunch of strip joints of about 500 yards that way cocaine dealer was just over there. It was all very good back in the good old days. But how would you describe your former so the heroin and is that what here in this environment. Was pretty cocky pretty arrogant i was gambling been a risk taker over confident so i was basically a pretty perfect personality for a stock broker and in fact my attitude. As i was then helps explain why the financial crisis happened. The people invented the Financial Products that exploded sent the Global Economy into a tailspin knew they would creating a Financial Planner that was doomed to fail because Interest Rates dont stay low for a puppy process dont go up forever but they didnt because in the 10 years well they fry these products they made millions in bonuses. How was the atmosphere in the city why did you sense that something was going to happen you know it being kind of cooling a financial crisis pretty much every 2 or 3 years since i joined the set. In 1906 i say ok this is it this is the big one guys. And we all felt that and that was actually one of the problems because when you feel like the whole house of cold is going to fall down the incentive then is to make as much money by whatever means possible. That you and you are thinking only of that year before you know the bank even exists 2 years time here with a critical of myself but it was actually a little bit late now i had pangs all the time about the industry i was working in from year one to when i finally left after 12 years every year i said this in my last year im just going to do it for one year and every year that bonus would come i think were also going to do in my life is going to be even bigger next year will stay so i got trapped so did you sell your soul to the devil and i did sell my soul to the devil very good price. Yeah i did i sell myself the devil i would do anything to get that bonus safe in the knowledge that if my actions then later proved to create profits that were not real it didnt matter its too late i had the money good boy its mine if somebody was solved because of your actions. I would say that we are all worse off because of the actions of this place which i was a member of i mean weve been living in austerity here all real wages. So havent even changed for about 10 years in the u. K. And so on that basis the casino i was working in and paid up member of help to make sure most people in this countrys laws probably slightly less well off than we should be. And finally we have to destroy another illusion the one of a flawless t. V. Production just take our resident a sortie force authorial style and matching patterns by colleague got our 1st look behind the scenes a dress code shows that the reality is less than perfect. Reason enough to his people wouldnt dad. And. And i wish i knew the rest of the script one more thing. And one more thing. Take your time by concentration of one more thing take your time we. Might have to talk to you. One more thing ok all right. Ok the support for. Plus a present for your hosts since. Ok. One of the most important to you so watch for the 3 things. You have thats now with a lot of details about the city. What does not remember modi and all. The fine tidings thing about not being in the mix of the fine times the mexican president enrique pena and yet all is wearing one more thing. If you see what i mean its more fluid ringback. Thats enough. And thats it for us too i hope you enjoyed this weeks edition of made for me chris gober and the entire team thanks for watching so youre next. To get. Into the conflict zone in these extraordinary times we decided to take the opportunity to focus on the impact that the coronavirus pandemic is having on human rights around the world there are reports of invasive surveillance authoritarian power grabs my guest is the head of Human Rights WatchKenneth Bravo many limitations are people willing to accept in order to fight a threat like coronavirus complex. In 30 minutes. What unites. What divides us. But. Trudging force. What binds the continent together. Better than stories aplenty. Spotlight on people. From good. Evening to minutes on t. W. Its a deadly sin. And the whim of nature. It motivates us. And threatens to ruin us. Greed. Be insatiable desire. That drives our template city danger its been one big no ive come to oppose comfort as a more because i see the harm is done to the world whats out there it dont give it to talk. Why are we greedy. Go in search of answers in a documentary film. Greed starts may 21st w. Frankfurt. International gateway to the best connection self in road and rail. Located in the heart of europe you are connected to the whole world. Experience outstanding shopping and dining offers and trialling services. Biala gassed at Frankfurt Airport city managed by for. This is the news live from Berlin Germany announces new measures for dealing with the coronavirus thats what the countrys Health Minister warns the virus will be here for a long time to come in preparation or does the flu vaccines have been increased to prevent a double whammy viral hit this fall also coming off a dangerous side effect off the pandemic