The Big Short—Capitalism Gone Mad

[Scuba]

http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/12/188459/big-short%E2%80%94capitalism-gone-mad

The 2008 financial collapse is the stuff of high drama, and cinema’s heavyweights have weighed in, depicting and documenting capitalism’s catastrophe with films such as Oliver Stone’s 2010 Wall Street sequel, 2011’s Margin Call, Costa-Gavras’ 2012 Capital, Martin Scorsese’s 2013 The Wolf of Wall Street and Charles Ferguson’s Best Documentary Oscar winner, 2010’s Inside Job. Now the star-studded The Big Short enters the film fray, but with a twist: Co-writer/director Adam McKay, whose credits include Saturday Night Live and Will Ferrell flicks like 2004’s Anchorman, brings a comedic sensibility to financial sector shenanigans. Indeed, Short has been nominated for four Golden Globes, including for Best Motion Picture—Comedy or Musical.

Based on actual events and characters, Short focuses on the fall of the housing market. Leavening what many might find extremely dry, complicated subject matter with humor, McKay keeps the movie moving. For instance, to make technical terms such as CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations), tranches, etc., understandable they are described by a beautiful blonde swigging champagne in a bubble bath, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain slicing and dicing seafood in a restaurant kitchen, and pop star Selena Gomez gambling in a casino. These droll vignettes help to demystify the highfalutin’ high finance verbiage and to make them more accessible to us mere mortals who don’t hold MBAs. Even more importantly, Short explains how the technical-sounding lingo of the so-called “masters of the universe” is deliberately intended to obfuscate, intimidate, and confuse ordinary folks, and to cover up the fact that Wall Street’s financial “products” are often worthless (or as several characters put it, “dog shit”).

While the so-called business press completely missed the story until this “shit” hit the fan, Short tells how a few investment outsiders stumbled upon the unfolding crisis and bet against it. (“Short” is Wall Street-ese for “bet”). They include the real life characters: Michael Burry (Christian Bale), a quirky neurologist with a penchant for heavy metal music and research, whose due diligence discerns the oncoming onslaught; opportunist Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), who also sees it all playing out and acts to cash in on the impending crash; and Michael Baum (scene stealing Steve Carell), whose religious Jewish background prompts him to strive to do the ethical thing, encouraged by wife Cynthia, played by Marisa Tomei. (Both Bale and Carell are Golden Globe-nommed in the Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical category.)

...

The Big Short enlightens viewers with its depiction of the fiscal fiascos that wrecked much of the global economy. The film reveals how during the Reagan era banking became America’s biggest industry (it doesn’t show how manufacturing, which actually produces useful things, was downsized and outsourced during the same period). The lack of regulations during George W. Bush’s presidency is exposed, along with the collusion between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the industry it is supposed to regulate. At a Las Vegas convention an SEC “enforcer” appears to be sleeping with one of the capitalists she is supposedly overseeing. (Dubya put his family’s Wall Street pedigree and Harvard MBA to good use, just as his unnecessary wars enriched his defense contractor campaign donors.)

[mmonk]

1. Looking forward to it

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Are we supposed to be cheering on people who made money off the collapse?

Isn't that the whole idea behind bubble markets? To allow the vultures to make money off both the bubble, and then more when it bursts?

This strikes me as being a Wall Street version of 2012, the apocalypse movie whose 'feel good' happy ending was a couple of regular people surviving along with all of the 0.1%ers who were scummy enough to leave most of humanity uninformed about the impending disasters so they had zero chance of survival, while they secretly funneled both illegal wealth and public funds into building giant arks to save the rich and powerful.

[mmonk]

3. Betting against the banks affected AIG,

but the whole cdo scheme by the banks affected the international economy.

[antigop]

4. Debunking “The Big Short”: How Michael Lewis Turned the Real Villains of the Crisis into Heros

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/12/debunking-the-big-short-how-michael-lewis-turned-the-real-villains-of-the-crisis-into-heros.html

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

6. Thanks, that article makes a more realistic assessment of things.

I hate to give any attention to Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, since the wildly popular book told a fundamentally misleading story of the crisis which sadly has become conventional wisdom. And it wasn’t just harmlessly inaccurate; it directed public and even lawmaker attention away from the real drivers of this debacle.

Absent the actions of the subprime shorts that Lewis lionized, the US would have suffered a S&L-level housing criss (which at the time was seen as a serious blow to the banking system and the economy), not a global financial crisis that came perilously close to taking down systemically important capital markets firms around the world. And let us not forget that the way in which the financial system was rescued represented the greatest looting of the public purse in history.

These 'heroes' are among the guys who made everything far worse.

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. Feature,not a glitch

That's not capitalism gone mad.

It's just capitalism.

[el_bryanto]

8. The Big Short has value in that it frames the issues well in an engaging style

But it also has problems in that because Lewis largely structures his works around a narrative there is a bit of distortion to it - by selecting a few "heroes" he does get to explain what was happening, but he more or less exonerates or ignores the actions of his heroes in making things potentially worse. See the article referenced above; I'm not as harsh as Yves Smith is, but he does make some important points.

I wouldn't discourage people from reading the book or seeing the movie - it's a damn sight better than "Poor people took out loans they couldn't afford and we all had to pay for it." But I would say that All the Devils are Here by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera and Chasing Goldman Sachs: How the Masters of the Universe Melted Wall Street Down-- and why They'll Take Us to the Brink Again by Suzanne McGee are better and more complete analysis.

I am particularly partial to McGee's work in that it explains what Wall Street is and what societal role it is supposed to fill in our society. While I understand there are people who would like us to abandon capitalism, as long as we are a capitalist economy something like Wall Street is a necessity and not necessarily a bad thing. The idea of a "money grid" that gets money from those who have it to those who need it is a good one.

Oh and if you really want to read an incredibly narcissistic and self aggrandizing take on the crisis --> A Colossal Failure of Common Sense by Lawrence G. McDonald and Patrick Robinson.

Bryant

[erpowers]

9. A Colossal Failure of Common Sense?

Thank you for your interesting points. Without giving away the book, can you tell me how A Colossal Failure of Common Sense is "an incredibly narcissistic and self aggrandizing take on the crisis"?

[el_bryanto]

10. It's written by a trader at lehman brothers (with another writer).

and proports to be the story of how that company fell apart. However it also includes a few chapters on the authors history - how he grew up and sold meat door to door and the like. Basically it's about how his group of traders (which he describes as the four horsemen at one point) kind of saw how things were going while Dick Fuld, head of Lehman Brothers, ran the company into the ground. As such it has some value in giving the mentality of a wall street trader.

Bryant