I enjoyed it but was a little :rolleyes: at some of the “Golly, gee-whillikers, guys! Isn’t anybody saying anything about this?”-ness of some of the characters. After all, each one of them could have closed down their funds and started a new career as a whistleblower… but they didn’t, electing to profit from the coming downfall.
The visit to the ratings agency was an attempt to blow the whistle, and was pointless.
It was Haruki Murakami, the novelist.
As Californians, we found the information that Dr. What’s-his-name is now investing in water to be more than a little alarming.
The ratings agency aren’t enforcers of laws, however. Going to S&P to report mortgage fraud is like finding a manufacturers defect in an automobile and only going to Consumer Reports, asking them to change their ratings.
We saw this last night. An amazing movie. Liked the celeb interludes, etc.
It was like a roller coaster ride without the boring clink-clink-clink uphill segments.
Bale wasn’t Bale. More like Dano in Love & Mercy, Pitt wasn’t Pitt. Which was great. However, Carrell was still Michael Scott from The Office, just channeling the perpetually angry component. The scene at group therapy was especially like this.
The one weakness they had in exposing things was the latter part where the bank’s were covering up their losses until they could sell off their loser bonds to suckers. This was the worst part of the affair and it didn’t get enough focus.
Some confusing things: How did the Colorado guys get hurt by the rating agencies?
That’s not why they went.
Baum just wanted to see if there was something that he was missing - he thought the bonds were crap, but S&P was rating them as gold. He wanted to ask them why they thought they were so good, and he got the answer he was anticipating - S&P was in on the lie.
OT: If you ever get a chance, watch the movie Even The Rain with Gael Garcia Bernal. It’s a very good movie about a group of filmmakers who go to a city in Bolivia (because it’s cheap to film there) to shoot a movie about Christopher Columbus. The clueless, tone-deaf and self-absorbed cast and crew, trying to make a film about locals vs. Columbus don’t realize that they’re filming right in the middle of a current, somewhat similar situation: an increasingly tension-filled dispute between the locals and a corporation that has bought up all the water rights in the region. It’s often funny but not a comedy, especially when the locals decide they’ve had enough, and the movie people wake up to what’s going on. Highly recommended.
I’ve started to watch some Khan Academy videos about the various aspects of the meltdown and want to see the movie again after I’ve watched as many as possible. The videos I’ve watched so far are extremely simplistic, just drawings on a blackboard, but that’s exactly what I need. The very first one I watched was a beginner’s explanation as to what a Credit Default Swap is. He made it very easy to understand why people lost their pensions, something I didn’t get (what did people defaulting on mortgages have to do with pensions?)
There’s a whole series of short but clear and informative videos and I need to go back and start at the beginning. The movie did a pretty good job of explaining several aspects, but I need reinforcement. The more you know and all.
They had the job of accurately rating the bonds. If their ratings reflected reality - if they were doing their job - they would have devalued the bonds.
I agree that they just went there for information but I don’t think he was anticipating the answer. When Melissa Leo told him that (I don’t remember exactly how this went) companies paid for ratings and if high ratings were’t given the companies would go to a competitor, the stunned look on his face showed me he was NOT expecting to hear that particular answer. I don’t know why he wouldn’t know that already but his reaction told me he didn’t.
Nice post. 
Thank you.
As a Canadian, I’ve been concerned for about twenty years that water shortages may develop in the USA and then I would guess the USA would have to look to the Great Lakes and other fresh water sources north of their border.
I have no idea how that would play out. But it is definitely concerning.
As I understand it, the shady dealings involved investment bankers selling the bad debt packages as wonderful financial instruments to pension funds and the like, when they KNEW they were terrible financial instruments that were going to blow up Real Soon Now, and who invested their own funds AGAINST those selfsame instruments, and made a bundle when they crashed. That is the sort of behavior that should put people in jail. It did not, which is an indictment of our justice system.
BTW, I have a documentary produced by the PBS show Frontline that documents this subject.
I haven’t watched it for several years but I remember that I enjoyed it very much when I did watch it.
Strangely, as I recall, it seemed to be quite different insofar as its explanation for the cause of the meltdown. I may be mistaken about that since it’s been many years since I’ve seen it. But I will try to watch it again later today to see if my memory is faulty or if it did contain substantial differences from the movie.
I just took a second look.
The program is titled: The Untouchables - Jan. 22, 2013.
It examines the disaster from a different viewpoint. The primary issue it addresses is why none of these crooks ever went to jail. It begins by looking at how so many mortgage loans were issued to people who didn’t qualify for a loan in any way shape or form.
There was one company in the SouthWest USA. I think it was called “Country Wide”. The owner was a real slime ball who had a personalized license plate that read “Fund 'Em”. The narrator says he saw the car in a parking lot one day and asked a passerby just what that could have meant.
The passerby told him that he worked for this company and their motto was, “a loan for every consumer.” The narrator asked, “Well, what if they don’t have a job?”.
The answer was, “Fund 'Em!”
“What if they don’t have any assets?” “Fund 'Em!”
“What if they don’t have any credit?” “Fund 'Em!”
And that was where this program indicates the problem began.
As I recall, it was a most excellent Frontline program and I just wanted to let you all know in case any of you might have any interest in watching it.
There were two other Frontline programs that were somewhat related to this one. The first was titled “The Madoff Affair” and that title is self-explanatory. The other one was titled, “To Catch a Trader” and it is about fraud and manipulation in the stock market. I don’t remember just how closely related it is to the disaster at the heart of “The Big Short”, but I’m going to watch it again. As I recall, it is very informative and also entertaining.
In general, I think Frontline is a most excellent documentary series. Always informative and entertaining.
But would anyone have listened to or believed them? A whistleblower usually has access to some secret information, and so they can say “Corporation X says they are making safe cars, but these internal documents show that they know that 1 out of 10,000 cars spontaneously catch on fire.” But none of the characters in the movie had secret information, they were just looking at the information differently, and able to see and believe things others would not. All the people that Christian Bale talked to had the same information as him, he just read further into it than most. And when he told them that the mortgage system would come crashing down and that’s why he wanted to short things, they just thought he was crazy and were willing to take his money.
They could have tried to go to the press and become whistleblowers, but that would require finding a reporter who listened, believed they weren’t crazy, and was willing to write a story. The movie did show the Colorado guys who talked to their reporter friend who did believe them about the credit ratings, but was unwilling to write anything and risk his job. Even if a story was written, I don’t know how much the industry at large and the American people would listen.
This attitude was referenced in the movie, with the 2 Florida mortgage brokers (Schmidt from “New Girl” was one)…they laughed that they were producing NINJA mortgages – No Income No Job. In the aftermath montage, they were at a job fair.
The reporter they went to was someone from the Wall Street Journal, too. Not like it was a little local rag! 
Everybody in the industry from top to bottom had their heads firmly in the sand.
I’m bumping this thread because my wife and I finally saw this movie over the weekend. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would; I’d probably say it’s one of the better movies I’ve seen in the past 12 months or so.
One limitation of the narrative was that they had to launch Steve Carrel’s character Baum on an investigation into the housing bubble so that the audience could learn along with him. As exposition it worked, but it made Baum seem pretty uninformed for an “expert.”
All in all, a fun and engaging movie.