Bre-X is remembered for its fraudulent deposit claims, but the lessons in the story are much larger than that. I finally got to watch the film this week on Neflix, and found it does a great job of illuminating human behavior and the lure of easy money. Timeless.
It’s often been said that the story of Calgary’s Bre-X Minerals had all the makings of a Hollywood script: gold, love, betrayal and mystery. Two decades after stock-market darling was declared a colossal hoax, the mining firm’s amazing tale is finally getting the celluloid treatment — though loosely based on true events — in a new film called Gold, starring Matthew McConaughey. Here is a direct video link.
Also for a review of the real Bre-X story, see Matthew McConaughey takes on Bre-X, but the real story behind Gold is crazier than fiction:
Part of the problem, Kipping says, is that humans easily fall prey to “eternally positive thinking” — even if an investment seems too good to be true, the desire to believe in it overrides rational thinking. He adds that most people also have short memories.
“The thing with these scandals is they happen, there’s a big reaction and, after two or three years, people move on,” Kipping says. “And that’s part of the problem and why these things keep happening. No one’s learning their lesson.”
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