The Anarchist Banker

​Named after a 1922 novella by Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, The Anarchist Banker restages Pessoa's dialogue between a banker and his secretary as a TV talk show – an interview between an investment banker and a news journalist. Pessoa's character is inspired by the life of Alves dos Reis, a shady financier who almost bankrupted the Portuguese state single-handedly by mounting a huge fraud which shook the credibility of the Portuguese currency, the Escudo. The dialogue's original content has been adapted to reflect upon today's financial practices and the resulting crisis of 2008, utilizing fragments of writings by Max Stirner and Milton Friedman. The banker's inexorable convictions and his defense of unabashed individualism, however, are faithful to the original, and prove themselves uncannily contemporary.