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The Love Of Money is the definitive behind the scenes account of the crash of 2008 – what happened, why it happened and how generations to come will be affected by its legacy.

Timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Lehman's collapse in September, the series chronicles the interlinked events of a crisis that took capitalism to the brink of collapse.

The Love Of Money features an unparalleled range of eye-witness contributions from most of the major players at the centre of the storm including: Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, Mervyn King, Tim Geithner, Alan Greenspan, the Finance Ministers of France, Germany and Iceland, the CEO's of Merrill Lynch and Barclays, Lehman's lawyer Rodgin Cohen and its bankruptcy lawyer, Harvey Miller, as well as US Congressional Leaders.

The programmes show how many believed they had found a way of eliminating risk, and therefore ending boom-and-bust economics. They explain how banks dabbled in new and complex investments which they believed offered risk-free rewards, only to discover this was wrong; how the whole system began to unravel as, first, banks and, then, entire countries teetered on the edge of collapse, and how our political and financial masters struggled to regain control and to pull us back from the brink.

The Love Of Money peels away the cultural layers of the housing boom, the easy-money society and the consumer dream that inflated the global economic bubble.

It examines the influence that the world's media had on events, simultaneously reporting and shaping the story, and it tells the emotional personal dramas that played out in extreme circumstances as well as the incredulity and humour that greeted the events as they unfolded.

And it will explore the role of the politicians and business leaders who helped created the problem by sweeping aside financial regulations designed to protect us – but now claim to have saved the world.

The Love Of Money also examines the story of how the rescue of the financial system has saddled us with a legacy of debt for generations to come and whether this huge investment will be enough to stave off further economic collapse.

The Love of Money is executive produced by Dominic Crossley-Holland and series produced by Michael Tuft. The series is co-produced by ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Factual and the Open University.

PH