Follow the Money

An Investor Tracks His Money Around the Globe

Produced by YLE

Introducing himself as a middle aged, middle income man, Timo Harakka is a Finnish Michael Moore, though less abrasive. He sets out to track a small investment he made in a Far East Fund. He travels to Copenhagen to meet with the portfolio manager who acts as his amused guide through the morass of global investment. He learns he is invested in 55 companies in the “digital universe’. Timo decides to discover where his money has gone and what effect it has made in different areas of the world..

Timo’s first stop is Seoul, where his investments include Samsung electronics.. Here he finds a massive corporate city where thousands work in production lines, no unions are permitted, and smaller enterprises have been driven out of business. The fund has also invested in gigantic discount chains that have put “mom and pop stores” out of business.

In China he notes that the Beijing airport is privatized. He travels to one of many industrialized zones where he is proudly shown plans for a gigantic Underwear City, which will supply the world with undergarments. In all the manufacturing plants he visits, Timo notices that unions are not allowed, and employers bear no responsibility for industrial injuries, which are plentiful.

A trip to India shows him that India’s manufacturing is going to be bigger even than China’s. When all the manufacturing is done in the ”underdeveloped countries,” what will the West contribute, he wonders? The answer that is offered is “research and development” and intellectual property rights. From this follows a discourse on the importance of “branding.”

In Mozambique Timo sees factories closed down because the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank found it more profitable to invest in Asia. The unstable political situation makes investment in Mozambique too risky.

Timo’s tour around the globe leads him to conclude “money is managing us…the global financial system is beyond control; everything has a price.”

75 min. Video or DVD. Sale $350. Video rental $85.