When I was growing up, I often wondered how it would feel to appear in a Hollywood movie. It never seemed very likely: I have spent my career first as an academic, studying the anthropology of marriage rituals in the remote mountains of Tajikistan, and then as an FT journalist, writing about equally specialist subjects such as Japanese banking and collateralised debt obligations (CDOs).
But the credit crunch has changed the world in many surprising ways. Last week, Sony Pictures released a documentary called Inside Job, which tells the story of the financial collapse. The narrator is Matt Damon, the Hollywood star best known for the Bourne films. The film also has interviews with luminaries such as George Soros, Christine Lagarde, Paul Volcker and Nouriel Roubini. And along the way, I also make my first appearance on the silver screen, filmed in unflattering close up. (Memo to self: if I ever appear in a film again, wear more mascara.)
By any standards it is a peculiar career twist – for me, if not Matt Damon. When I first started writing about high finance five years ago, the topic seemed so utterly dull and geeky that it was ignored by the mainstream world. Banking did not get Hollywood salivating. Hunks such as Damon did not wake up dreaming of CDOs, even though as Jason Bourne he is no stranger to other opaque or off-balance-sheet entities, given his role at the black-ops arm of the CIA, Treadstone.