corporate finance

A Big Think talk in which hedge-fund manager William Ackman goes through the basics of finance and investing in under an hour. It is pitched as a crash course on the most important concepts.

Composer Tantacrul explores how corporatism produces soulless background music, and how some companies use such music in propaganda-style campaigns. He composes several corporate styles to show their tropes, with some music theory along the way.

First session of MIT 15.401 Finance Theory I (Fall 2008) taught by Andrew Lo, giving a course overview and introducing core finance concepts. The course ran during the 2007-08 financial crisis.

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

Together Louisiana asks why Louisiana stays poor despite its natural resources and industry, focusing on industrial tax exemptions and corporate welfare.

Bryan Cantrill's talk on corporate open source anti-patterns, first given at FISL 2012 and again at the Liferay Symposium. He lays out the mistakes companies make when open sourcing code, such as announcing future open sourcing, and discusses licenses.

The first lesson of Martin Shkreli's introductory investing and finance course, running about two and a half hours. His related tutorials cover reading 10-K filings and building DCF models.

Weird Al's whiteboard-animated music video parodying corporate buzzword culture, from the album Mandatory Fun. The lyrics are packed with business jargon.

A corporate jingle-style song about KPMG, uploaded to YouTube with a glossy pop and R&B treatment. It is a cheesy corporate theme song.

A short Adam Ruins Everything clip arguing that corporations shift blame for litter and waste onto consumers. It touches on the packaging industry's anti-litter campaigns.

A one-minute clip from South Park in which BP issues a hilariously insincere corporate apology over its oil spill.

A six-minute clip of the famous speech from the 1976 film Network in which the world is described as a corporation. It portrays a world run by corporate interests.

A short Flash animation made in 2001 by an IBM employee, set to the company's old 'Ever Onward' rally song, with imagery from IBM history.

A scene from the 2011 film Margin Call in which risk head Eric Dale is laid off by HR and hands a USB stick to a young analyst. It shows a scripted, impersonal corporate firing.

Not Just Bikes explains the Strong Towns argument that car-dependent American suburbs cost more to maintain than they generate in taxes. It describes the growth Ponzi scheme that props up municipal finances.

The first video in Not Just Bikes' Strong Towns series explains the financial instability of North American cities, based on Strong Towns research. It argues that low-density suburban growth costs more to maintain than it brings in.

Patrick Boyle analyzes SpaceX's IPO prospectus, covering its financials, speculative products, AI business, related-party dealings, compensation, and a governance structure with minimal shareholder rights.

Charles Marohn of Strong Towns presents, in a Talks at Google session, the ideas from his book on why many North American towns struggle financially despite decades of growth. He argues for incremental, bottom-up city building as a path to local prosperity.

Not Just Bikes contrasts traditional and suburban development in North America. It looks at the financials behind each pattern and argues that suburban development leaves cities unable to pay for their own infrastructure.

Strong Towns explains the Growth Ponzi Scheme, in which post-war suburban growth takes on infrastructure costs that new development must keep funding. It describes why municipal finances become insolvent.

The shareholder speech by Larry the Liquidator, played by Danny DeVito, from the film Other People's Money. He argues that a dying company should be liquidated rather than kept alive.

A two-minute clip from the film Fight Club in which the narrator, a former recall coordinator, explains the formula companies use to decide whether a recall costs more than paying out settlements.

CGP Grey explains that the City of London is a tiny, separate entity with its own governance, history and privileges, distinct from the city called London. He covers its financial role and how it is run.

Not Just Bikes explains how many American suburbs, built all at once rather than incrementally, cannot cover their infrastructure costs and survive on growing debt. It draws on Strong Towns' work on the growth Ponzi scheme.

Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig argues that US democracy is corrupted by money, since a tiny fraction of the population effectively funds who gets elected. He says fixing this must come before addressing issues like climate change or student debt.

The Tokyo Llama channel details how the creators found and bought an abandoned akiya minka house in Japan. It covers process, costs, taxes, financing and risks of renovation.

A podcast episode of Arrested DevOps with Andrew Clay Shafer and Bryan Cantrill, featuring Cantrill's rant on integrity in companies and technology.

An Adam Ruins Everything segment on the real facts of the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, covering the severity of the burns and the corporate PR campaign that painted it as frivolous.

A Last Week Tonight segment on retirement plans, high fees and bad financial advice, with comedic sketches. It explains how fees eat into retirement savings and favors low-cost passive investing.

A short RepresentUs explainer on how money corrupts American politics and what an anti-corruption act could do about it. It covers lobbying, super PACs and campaign finance, and pitches the group's proposed reforms. The video was later superseded by an updated version.

A nine-minute excerpt from the 1992 documentary Manufacturing Consent in which Noam Chomsky summarizes how corporate media shapes public discourse.

A VPRO documentary on quantitative analysts who designed the mathematical models and high-speed trading systems behind modern finance. It features figures such as Paul Wilmott and asks what risks come from treating markets as a machine.

Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns explains how a land value tax differs from an ordinary property tax, why it makes economic sense, and why it is rarely used. It is a short six-minute explainer.

Tom Scott visits Yale's archives to look at a 367-year-old bond from a Dutch water authority that is still paying interest. Finance professor Geert Rouwenhorst explains how it works.

A Chappelle's Show sketch in which drug dealer Tron Carter and a white businessman face the justice system in very different ways.

A 2018 Facebook UK ad, part of the 'Here Together' campaign, promising to do more to keep users safe and protect their privacy after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

The Office Space scene where Peter is grilled by his bosses for missing the cover sheet on his TPS report.

A one-minute Yahoo Finance clip of President Biden saying he would shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia further invaded Ukraine.

The full-length Numberphile interview with mathematician and hedge fund founder Jim Simons. He discusses his path from mathematics and codebreaking to founding Renaissance Technologies, his use of algorithms in markets, and his philanthropy.

Lawrence Lessig's Talks at Google presentation based on his book Republic, Lost, arguing that money in politics corrupts Congress and eroded public trust, and outlining what could be done about it. It supports the argument with data on political donations.