Green Light

Yesterday I had an idea for a movie.

Genre: horror/economics

Setting: the present day, mid-sized American metropolitan area.

Plot: Everything seems perfectly normal in Urbantown USA, until one day members of the press, academia, the arts, and government bureaucracies start mysteriously thrashing about and dropping dead at work, in full view of their coworkers. All due to strangulation. No assailant is ever seen.

Title: The Invisible Hand

Tag line: In a world where where government spending was out of control, no force on Earth could control the ravenous appetite of the public sector. No force ..... on Earth.

Alternate tag line: Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. The whole, or almost the whole public revenue, is in most countries employed in maintaining unproductive hands... Such people, as they them-selves produce nothing, are all maintained by the produce of other men's labour... Those unproductive hands, who should be maintained by a part only of the spare revenue of the people, may consume so great a share of their whole revenue, and thereby oblige so great a number to encroach upon their capitals, upon the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour, that all the frugality and good conduct of individuals may not be able to compensate the waste and degradation of produce occasioned by this violent and forced encroachment.

The story needs to be fleshed out a little bit, but this baby writes itself. Anybody out there getting me a thirty page treatment by the end of the week gets cut in on the gross.

For the cast, I envision Heather Graham in the lead role. She'll play the intrepid, brilliant classical economics professor (Dr. Erika Love) who finally connects the dots and begs the authorities to limit the rate of growth in government spending to that of inflation. Before it's too late! The thrilling climax of the movie occurs during her riveting testimony about the Quantity Theory in front the Senate Budget Committee.

I, of course, will play her love interest, the handsome, cadish blogger (Paul Saint). While she painstakingly cracks the case, risking life and limb in the process, I sit back and make sarcastic comments.

I see a Summer 2007 release. Summer 2008 will bring the release of the sequel -

"The Invisible Hand 2: The Wrath of Keynes"