Scenes from the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUsj7EdZigM

Life imitating art?

The plot of an obscure 1981 film Rollover, directed by Alan Pakula and starring Kris Kristofferson and Jane Fonda, concerns an ambitious banker (Kristofferson) who accidentally discovers a strange top-secret account and hacks the password. To his astonishment, he learns that the Arab oil cartel, fearful of USD collapse, are not "rolling over" Certificates of Deposit (CDs) held in the U.S. and other banks but, instead, are secretly buying gold with the matured funds. The Arab purchases of massive amounts of gold are transacted at the highest level by New York Bank chairman Maxwell Emery (Hume Cronyn) to ensure confidentiality. When the Arabs realize their secret has been compromised, they pull their money out of U.S. banks at an accelerated pace. Soon, the invested public catches on, and a worldwide crisis of confidence triggers a financial meltdown. Gold hits US$2000 per ounce overnight. The film ends with Americans rioting in the streets in the realization the worth of their paper money is declining to its intrinsic value, to paraphrase the great Voltaire.

For more on this film including video clips, please see:

http://blog.goldassets.co.uk/2008/10/31/rollover-essential-movie-viewing-in-these-unprecedented-financial-and-economic-times/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_%28film%29