Boo Banks! A Bitter Pill and a Bitter Movie
By Skip Sheffield
Hate banks? Me too. So apparently do a number of A-list
Hollywood stars.
Inspired by actual events, “The Big Short” is about a small
group of smart young financial analysts who predicted the real estate meltdown
of 2008 and benefitted by it. It is an angry picture; a first drama directed by
Adam McKay, who teamed with Will Ferrell to produce the silly comedies “Step
Brothers” and “Anchorman.” The script is by true story specialist Michael Lewis
(“Moneyball,” “The Blind Side”), who adapted his book “The Big Short: Inside
the Doomsday Machine.”
Christian Bale plays the ringleader of the prognosticators, Dr.
Michael Burry, a neurosurgeon-turned hedge fund manager. What Dr. Burry lacks
in social graces he makes up with sheer intelligence. He has studied thousands
of mortgages and has concluded most will default within a few years when
variable-rate interest kicks in.
When Mark Baum (Steve Carell in a bad toupee) hears Dr.
Burry’s theory, he is on board. Baum is an in-your-face pushy alpha-male. Marisa
Tomei is his subordinate wife Cynthia.
Baum’s cohorts include Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) and
Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock). With the help of retired bank insider Ben
Rickert (Brad Pitt), the quartet is buying up bonds they know are “junk,” and
they will sell them just before they surely default; in essence betting on
their failure. In the course of their research, the men discover that banks
have not only been making risky loans to under-financed people, they are
engaging in practices that are actually illegal.
Florida is specifically cited as a state where outrageously
risky home loans have been approved. Hastily-constructed vacant tract homes are
listed as worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, with those empty houses as collateral.
Tension builds as the traders bet ever more on disaster,
betting against higher-ranked bonds. These guys are not heroes. They are driven
by greed, but they are appalled by the immorality and illegality of major
financial institutions. You will appalled too, and angry that somehow banks wrangled
a bailout by taxpayers. That’s you and me. While I never defaulted on my
mortgage, I did see the value of my house cut in half by the time I was forced
to sell it. It was a bitter pill and this is a bitter movie.
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