UKC

Has anyone seen this film?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/

It's a drama-documentary about the dodginess going on around sub-prime mortagages in the mid-naughties that led to the global banking crisis. A good film and some really scary realities of the BS of Wall Street.

There's a synopsis at the end that basically says, Goldman Sach, Deutche Bank et al got away with it, how the public had to pay for it and now they're doing exactly the same again.

Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell and Brad Pitt amongst others. Well worth a watch.

P.S. No car chases and nothing gets blown up! (Except the housing market).

In reply to Hugh J:

You should read the book first. It helps make sense of the scale of stupidity and greed shown by the banking world. Not one Wall Street CEO lost their job having presided over the biggest corporate negligence ever displayed.

In reply to Gone for good:

Yeah I know, someone named Kareem Serageldin was the sole fallguy.

I certainly would like to check out the book, has it got the same title? Who's is by, is it Michael Burry or Mark Baum? Or someone else?

In reply to Hugh J:

It doesn't say that GS and other banks 'got away with it.'
Most banks didn't get away with it at all.

One division of DB, and some hedge funds 'got away it'(as you put it).

Yes, the film is excellent but please get your rant right.

In reply to Hugh J:


It's by Michael Lewis, who has written a number of good books about financial shenanigans. As has been said, the book does a great job of highlighting just how wrong things were.

In reply to tony:

Ta

In reply to ClimberEd:

When I said getting away with it I'm not on about financiallly, but rather CEOs etc not going to jail as they deserved too. Just having their bonuses cut for a year or two is hardly a deterrent, that's why they're doing virtually the same again.

In reply to Hugh J:

It's an excellent movie I'll agree. But (in regard to the films claims at least) the industry really isn't doing "virtually the same again".

The CDO clusterf*ck is (hopefully) protected against in post crash (2010) rules that regulate the riskiest types of investments. Obviously the Big Short claims CDOs have been rebranded as BTOs and they are trading again, but it doesn't tell us that BTOs fall deeply in the new 'regulated to f*ck' category for obvious reasons. While not completely guarding against a repeat of the crisis, the chances of a BTO issue bringing down the world economy as the CDOs did is pretty damn unlikely.

The take home is... yes, BTOs are basically the same as CDOs. Yes, the finance world is trading BTOs. Yes, BTOs have the potential to screw the world economy. But a lot more will need to be sold and the regulation will need to go. So it's possible, but unlikely. Lessons have been learned the hard way.

The problem is... how many more lessons will we need to learn the hard way before wallstreet begins learning them the easy way.

In reply to A Longleat Boulderer:
Cheers Longleat Boulderer, good to get an alternative view from someone else.

In reply to Hugh J:

Great film.
Contrarians rule!

In reply to Hugh J:

Check out the film 'Enron: The smartest guys in the room' for more tales of capitalist cnutdom.

Free market anyone?

In reply to Hugh J:

Yes, saw it a year ago when it was on cinematic release with Oscar buzz all around it. How they nominated Bale and not Carrell, is beyond me. Carrell was brilliant. It it is a good film, I think I scored it 8/10. It is demanding and needs a second viewing. Whole cast was great even if Bale was a bit cardboard/annoying and Pitt overdid the "mumblecore Redford" thing. I liked the two young guys a lot.

In reply to Hugh J:

>P.S. No car chases and nothing gets blown up! (Except the housing market).

P.P.S. There are loads of big mature adult dramas being made and distributed in the mainstream or near-mainstream, that don't feature car chases or things being blown up. Please explain why you felt the need to say "No car chases and nothing gets blown up!" with respect to The Big Short.

In reply to Blue Straggler:



Just as a warning to those who like things like "Fast and Furious 37" or whatever number we're up to now. The only thing I've done fast and furiously that many times (actually a lot more than that) is . . . . . . . Banking!

In reply to Blue Straggler:


I thought Bale was quite good and did the "on the spectrum" bit quite well. Being the extreme method actor he is, it must have been a nightmare to have been around him at the time. Since Fight Club or perhaps even 12 Monkeys, Brad is the anti-establishment go to hippy these days. But you're right, Steve Carell was really, really good.

In reply to Removed User:


Cheers Hardonicus, I will check it out.

In reply to A Longleat Boulderer:

And in fact, I wouldn't be betting the house on the longevity of Dodd/Frank, chances are very good that those regulations will be gone shortly.

In reply to redjerry:
Which again, is worrying. Look what happened after Glast-Steagell was repealed by Bill Clinton. The financial institutions ballooned due to deregulation, many made extreme amounts of money out of nothing before it went tits up and the tax payer had to pick up the pieces. The stock markets are already ballooning now that Dodd-Frank is under threat. Here we go again? Brace for crash-landing!

In reply to Hugh J:


CEOs don't (and didnt) deserve to go to jail for their organisations bundling and selling/reselling of MBS's (which is what the film is all about). It wasn't illegal.

A few people realised there was a 'glitch in the matrix' and made a shit load of money out of it.
If a few people make a shit load of money someone else has to lose it.

That's what the film was all about. A few people realising the problem that no one else realised and making a shit load of money out of it.

You can have your anti capitalist rants, but make sure your understanding is accurate please.

In reply to Hugh J:

You might like Wardogs if you enjoyed Big Short. Not about banks, but a great story about guys manipulating a system to make money.

Re Michael lewis... Another great read is Flash Boys. Exposing high frequency trading and the race to get as close to the exchange as possible to shave millionths of a second off data flow to front run orders. Fascinating stuff

In reply to ClimberEd:

My point is that the CEOs were at least guilty of gross negligence that ruined a lot of lives, but not very many of theirs.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:



I thought it was a terrible film! It had promise, with a good pair of leads and crazy true-story source material, but for me it really failed as a film. The comedy didn't work for me. I gave it 5/10. A shame as I had been looking forward to it.

In reply to ClimberEd:
They exploited the system to make themselves incredibly rich at the expense of of lots of other people.

If governments hadn't stepped in, a lot more financial institutions would have gone under. The mess they created had to be cleaned​ up by the tax payer, the poorest in society are still paying for that in the form of austerity. The guys who created the mess didn't suffer any legal and very little financial consequences.

While what they did wasn't illegal, the phrase I'd use to describe the outcome would be considerably stronger than "getting away with it"

In reply to Hugh J:

I haven't seen it but will at some point, but if you are interesting in the financial crisis and haven't seen it you should watch Margin Call with Kevin Spacey, the good British bloke and Demi Moore amongst others - basically its a sort of imagined recreation of the collapse of Lehman Bros.

99 Homes is another good one that shows what happened to the people on the other end of the junk mortgages in Florida.

And listen to: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-... and exceptional piece of radio on the crash. I was in Stockholm for some reason and started listening to it leaving my hotel and going for a jog. I hate jogging but was so captivated by that show that I just kept running for the full hour and ended up miles away from where I had started!