Yeah, I was struggling with that too, not to be unfair as the actors are relatively speaking low volume, but it should have been handled much better here and raised a bar or two for the conversation. I almost have to have headphones on to hear every syllable clearly.
What a piece of dramatic art this is. Both actors are superb. And Jeremy irons , eating while talking, is outstanding. You don’t lose your appetite for this, he seems to be saying. Have a steak, bite it. Chew it. Eat it. After all this is what all is about. Eat or be eaten. He conveys the message superbly.
It's also a display of great acting skill because there's only so many takes you can do in a row when every one of them involves you devouring steaks. You make a mistake and you have to loosen your belt another notch lol.
Have you noticed that Irons is devouring his meal, while Spacey has nothing in front of him? This turmoil does not affect Iron's appetite, where as Spacey cannot stomach anything. Great take on the psychological aspect of nerves!
I love Kevin Spacey’s almost imperceptible flinch when Jeremy Irons mentions starving dogs. He realizes that he has lost track of his dying pet (who by now, is certainly gone) in all this turmoil.
But Scar is exactly right. Money is a means to keep us from killing each other for food. Money has value because we put our FAITH in it that someone will take it when a debt is owed. Forget about Christianity and every other religion on the planet, the worlds economy is hands down the largest religion and we are all a bunch of suckers for believing in it. But just the right amount of money and comfort keeps us from storming the castle.
Spacey is one of my favourite actors ( i think his roles in the usual suspects and K-Pax being his finest) but Irons is in a different class.@@sarahcameron9401
Irons kills it. I can feel his back story. Working class english background but had brains and a ruthless streak set off making it big in the United States and rest of the world.
He missed out two key infamous crashes: 1720 - South Sea Bubble - featuring Sir Isaac Newton and his top quote 1998 - Long Term Capital Management and the Russian Default Otherwise here's the list of events he goes through, I always wanted to look them up in detail: 1637 - Dutch Tulip Mania 1797 - US Land Speculation Bubble 1819 - First Great Depression 1837 - US Commercial Paper (Specie) Crisis 1857 - First Global Economic Crisis 1884 - US Marine National Bank panic 1901 - First US Stock Market Crash 1907 - Knickerbocker Panic 1929 - Crash and start of Great Depression 1937 - Roosevelt downturn 1974 - Bretton Woods / Nixon Shock Global Crash 1987 - Black Monday - Program Trading Crash 1992 - Recession 1997 - Asian Crisis - Soros 1B Malaysia/Bank of England trade 2000 - DotCom Bust
Soros caused the ‘92 British pound crisis, ‘97 Thai baht crisis to cause the near successful regicide of the Thai monarchy, and the 2022 Sri Lankan rupee crisis to induce a regime change where Gota was replaced by Ranil
After listening to Irons' character rattle off those prior market crashes, does anybody have any doubt that Irons' character could give a detailed description on every single one of them without blinking an eye? Dude is wicked smart.
"It wasn't brains that got me here I'll assure you that" *proceeds to fire off every economic bubble to burst from the past 4 centuries without missing a beat*
@@edwardheaney3641 well, every one of them was a Minsky moment, economic stability creates unstability and crash, stable growth increases leverage and leads to bubble. So simple and we've known since the 70s, in fact Minsky based it on Keynes who was totally misinterpreted, and so on. Throw in a bit of Eugine Fama with his Gaussian bell-curve distribution of the markets where a crash is a one in a million year event we see every 7 years - closer to a Pareto-Levy fat tail distrubution Taleb has proven along with Mandelbrot. Anyways. Bobby Axelrod knows this all.
It's not acting, it's the ugly truth. You missed the "It's made up." Capitalism is a system to trade stuff (most of which we dont really need), for money. With this part I am fine, because we would not only be killing each other to get something eat. Were there not something as a job to keep ourselves busy, humans would find tons of reasons more to kill eachother. The part I really dont like is that this stupid system destroys our planet.
Kazimierz Garshin Your definition of capitalism seems incorrect. The device I'm watching and commenting this wasn't send by god or a planned product of another system. It is a product of a system which allocated resources to something which promised financial success for its inventor and/or manufacturer. That stupid system created an environment where your ancestors decided to settle down, own land or a house maybe and produce offspring. Because in the long process of human developmen the profitable ideas prevailed and the neanderthal who kept on collecting berries instead of using tools to hunt eventually removed himself from the genepool. YOU are part of the system, too my friend :)
@@kazimierzgarshin3924 Yes obviously paper money, gold and essentially everything has the value that we as a society put on it. But it's still technically real. I mean paper money when it comes down to it is a physical representative of work/value so as to be traded more efficiently. I mean the only real alternatives to these representative/symbolic money systems is what barter/trade or communism?
@@kazimierzgarshin3924 Our planet is fine. It's not going anywhere. We are. This stupid system as you call it has lifted untold millions out of poverty and allowed technology that makes dirty things like burning coal and trees for heat into clean things like boiling water to turn a generator from a nuclear reaction.
Why would there be special effects in this scene? You act like movies today don't have conversations in them anymore. You are comparing a drama to an action movie to prove a point that doesn't exist. LMAO!
Missed the one in 1921. Central bank or government did nothing and it was boom time again in 18 months. Not quite so in 1929. Hoover did all the things and it lasted over a decade.
Hoover should have butted out and let the chips fall where they may, like Harding did in 1921. He instead tinkered with things outside his element (a la Roosevelt), and effectively bled a wounded patient into the Great Depression. And I think Irons missed one major bubble...the Panic of 1873.
@@mikepetitti They show different sides of the coin. The Big Short is consumer/exterior focused, Margin Call is a movie about what went on inside the Investment Banks.
Sir Isaac Newton back in 1720 was also wiped out by the “South Sea Bubble” and he said: “ I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of man”.
@@tiendoan1333 He might as well have. He (mostly) invented differential calculus, but markets are chaotic. It wasn't until stochastic calculus and chaos was figured out over 200 years later that people started to understand how to model markets.
@@22espec It's not greed, its chaos (in the mathematical sense). Markets are fractal; no one can tell the difference between a small correction and a big correction. Think of it this way: predicting the market is the same type of problem as predicting the weather.
It's too smart for the average person. I know, that's sad, because even this movie has been dumbed down and emotionally exaggerated for the big screen, but even after all that, it's still too smart for the average person. I wish I didn't know how stupid the average person was, but I really do know. They mean well, they're nice... But they are stupid beyond even your lowest expectations, and if you don't keep it to yourself, no one will ever want to talk to you or do anything nice for you.
The Big Short was about the same subject, and actually depicted some of the real people involved. It was more brash and maybe more *slick* but I really like the tone and performances of this one. Not sure if I like it more or less, it's just different.
I think he realises that Tuld is right at some level, they are but tiny parts of a giant global economic machine and while it will hurt a lot of people inevitably when the markets crash yet again, it is totally unavoidable, so feeling guilty doesn't make sense, it was going to crash anyway eventually. This is the path that humanity and nature has chosen, boom and bust, repeatedly over and over again but the hope is that the strides that we make during the boom times will be worth the pain of the bust times.
The cast is dead-on! The characters are beyond real. The movie is probably underrated because it reflects real life back at ya in corporate, especially in the finance industry. This is probably one of my all-time favorite movies.
"Fat cats and starving dogs" - that's when Sam finally admits to himself that he is trapped in the system: He's a fat cat but goes hungry like a starving dog, always needing more money; and that is beautifully portrayed by him sitting in front of a juicy steak at a fine table and not having any of it.
More like he had to pay off the Veterinarian bills for his Dog (he says earlier in the movie it was costing him thousands a day) and take care of his son who may have lost his job because of the crash.
I like how Irons gets caught in a little cycle of rattling off numbers, just like we saw earlier in the film with several of the other characters (the salary spending, the bridge hours). Really drives in just how much everything is just numbers to these guys - it's how they relate to the world.
This is what true cinematography is. All about people and clean art of acting. Reflects Glengarry glenross in certain sense, this is pure awesomeness. Movie as it should be.
What is low key brilliant about this film is how it follows the chain of moral culpability from the bottom up, showing us how the powerful and rich maintain their status even when they completely fail to lead or provide any value to anyone, and how those who work with a sense of moral purpose get nothing in return for it.
Even more so is that Irons did not lie. The purpose of money. The benefits and the downfall of it. How it allowed for easier peaceful interactions with people and help their labor mean something. And how people chase it. Earn it and lose it.
"A turtle doesn't end up on the fence post by himself" - Bill Clinton. The rich know human nature and the poor are dumb enough to buy into it, thinking they can get rich without working for it. As this movie stated earlier, the players play and as long as everyone gets "theirs", they are all happy. We only begin to look for scapegoats, when our getting ours, blows up and then we are no different then the "rich" in that we look for someone to blame, instead of looking in the mirror to determine how we contributed to the game.
"...and how those who work with a sense of moral purpose get nothing in return for it." Yer funny. Wrong, but still funny. If you think that you are working with a moral purpose and getting nothing for it, then you ain't working with a moral purpose.
@@trut52 divorces and taxes will do that to you. Debts don't matter. You don't take it with you when you die. It's just money and money spreads around.
You know what the real acting part in this scene is? That nose wipe from Jeremy at 1:10-1:20. For me, it is so much the character that it HAD to be in the movie. No matter how many takes it took, that made it. And it was a perfect, subtle addition of detail that really does it for me.
That last statement “cause I need the money” speaks on a whole other level. Everyone thinks having a bunch of money will solve all their problems, when all it really does is open them up to bigger problems they didn’t even know existed. If you’re not content/comfortable/responsible with the money you do have, you’ll never be any of things no matter how much more you make
Like in The Aviator, Hughes told Hepburn's mother after telling Howard that they don't care for money, "That's because you have it." The majority of ppl whose main concern is money, simply don't have it. That's how I see this scene.
The Observant Servant actually, it applies to moneied people, too. That's all they think about, that's all they obsess about, whatever they have, they want more.
@Greg F. Most of the transactions in the financial "markets" are speculation. The "markets" are not the heart of the economy. They are not NEEDED to finance the productive economy. That has been done with boring banking. Many not too large banks in cooperation with a central bank. The unprecendented economic miracle after WW2 was mainly financed by a much more restricted and regulated bank sector. In the Soviet Union and satellite states with direct financing, they did have some successes given that the S.U. was a bitterly poor country, and the massive losses they had in WW1 and even worse in WW2. The command economy, the top down micromanagement cost them a lot of productivity. Still they held their own in the arms race . All of that plus bringing the country forward to a - if modest - modern standard (literacy, healthcare, covering the basic needs) was financed w/o a stock exchange or private capital. In the U.S. there was of course an active stock exchange, and maybe to some degree it played a role in the U.K. after 1949 - although I assume the recovery in the 1950s had little to do with the stock exchange and a lot with the bold investments of the social Democratic government. The key industries and railway and public transports as well as the healthcare services were publicly owned, and the mines and banks already existed. In continental Europe the stock exchange did not play much of a role. Many key industries were nationalized (not in Germany for instance but their stock exchange was a lame affair), and they had a mix of some large and many small and medium sized companies who would not have the size to be listed anyways. But were the base for a thriving export industry. The financial "markets" leech off the PRODUCTIVE economy. With leverage now allowed by laws and made possible by colluding central banks and regulators looking the other way. and with money created by laws. Money is a legal and societal construct. in 2011 on a given day open derivatives in the U.S. were around 700 TRILLION USD - versus an U.S. GDP (that is over the period of 1 year) of between 18 and 19 trillion USD. it is not productive, it is not necessary and it is dangerous. The stock exchange always has been a playground for rich people trying to increase their fortunes w/o taking entrepreneurial risks - and that dates back to the 18th century. When investing in a company (or back in the day in a ship for instance) a lot of things can go wrong, usually one stays invested for quite some time - or the project is going to fail if only for the lack of longer committment. And it needs expertise and oversight. Shares on the other hand can change hands quickly, w/o committment and w/o special interest in the company, the product, market, customer, new technologies or product innovation. Large investors do more research - but the focus is on the expected profit and there is not really a committment to / interest for the product. Europe was rebuilt after WW2 mainly w/o the money of the stock exchange, let alone that bets (derivatives) would have been allowed (by actors who have no stake in the underlying real- economy transaction). These days a lot of the "trading" is done by computers. And most of these transactions are baits, to fool other particiants (or computers) in the game (to avoid the word market which is completely inappropriate). I do not know WHY that is even allowed - except that politicians are bought and paid for and/or clueless. As long as the party goes on it is highly lucrative and the banks or the "investors" could not make enough money with giving out loans and investing in companies. There a just not enough good, viable productive projects - not with the current global level of wages / disposable income of consumers. In the developing countries wages are kept as low as possible, and in the wealthy countries they have been pretty stagnant since the 1980s. There a global over capacities for industrial production (for the current disposable incomes). The profits are huge and are amassed at the top (away from the bottom and middle income segment) - but there are not nearly enough investments for the fortunes (to produce more goods or services). So like in the Roaring Twenties, from 1990 - 2006 ,and now again the activities of Big Finance are to a large degree speculative. If they would have to put down only a fraction of the money for the transactions they engage in, they would have to stop the insane game. The insanity of the derivates has been a little bit reduced (in 2011 I think some alarm bells rang - the volumes were reduced to 300 - 400 trillion open volume per day - but I think it then increased again). In 2011 a major part of the bets were on interest rates btw (I assume most of it for U.S. government bonds), not even on currencies or commodities. See the article in zerohedge if interested. Interest rates are SET by the central banks - it does not get more "government intervention" and "not a market" like that. Someone will have to explain to me how bets on the interest levels (that are set at will by central banks) are helpful for the productive economy. Even so - if the "traders" would only have to make down payments of as little as 10 % of the open volumes, that would be 30 - 40 trillion on any given day in the U.S. - and only for derivatives. (The volumes on the stock markets are considerable but not nearly as much as for the bets). There is not enough money in the system, and the banks - who have now become speculators themselves - should not be allowed to give them "credit" for these sums. Money has been very cheap, only recently the interest rates were increased. Stocks are over-priced but there is still _some_ connection to the real world - despite high frequency trading. Of course every pretense of market or regulatory oversight is ridiculous. 30 minutes of trading would take the U.S. regulators 1 year to analyze - if they are lucky.
He states why money is unimportant and that its made up - only for Kevin Spacey to say he still needs it. In the end, principles are compromised because of the need to have money.
I worked for Lehman Brothers - on which this movie is basically based. I was there until the very end in 2008. I even had a meal in the Lehman executive dinning room (where this scene appears to have been set) less than a year before the events depicted here. This movie captures very much the essence of the time and place. This is one of my favorite films, it is haunting.
ACTUALLY, to be fair and factual, THEY had been selling security used products distorting the risks by merging risk tranches and packaging them as low risk products when they KNEW they have high risks embedded in them that clients would never have the energy , time ability or ability dissect. They were milking it until the music stopped. It was fraud of such a high order and scale that nobody COULD go to jail, or the wonderful “system” irons talks about in sufferingly and self serving ly would collapse, and unfortunately take all of us down with it. Head they win, tails we lose...the system HAS to be fundamentally changed. The whole problem is NOBODY did a perp walk .It will happen again, soon.look at today’s market leverage and speculation and over valuation.and all these firms can front run all of us with the collocation high speed trading and AI.
Kevin Spacey's look from 2:07 just says everything about his character's feelings: tiredness, disgust... Such a fantastic actor (and I don't mean that Irons is not).
Jeremy Irons as John Tuld is one of the finest examples of a necessary evil. A Machiavellian man who knows that for the survival of the company sometimes you have to do scummy things. Masterclass performance.
It is "just money" when you're wealthy, well connected, part of the elite and downturns have little effect. For everyone else, its rent, insurance, a car payment, child support, utilities, food, heat...all the necessities of life that thinly margin people from homelessness, despair, the unmooring of personal relationships.
I disagree. A downturn is the time to buy. It is the time to turn pieces of paper into real objects. it is the time to build up your assets. If you are the elite downturns is the time your climb. A time to buy when people are desperate to sell.
Vlad Xavier You’re missing the point of what he’s saying. You were lucky enough to have enough money to invest in other things. Many people don’t have that luxury and rely on money purely to survive in the economy because of how little they have. To those poor and lower middle class people, money is everything.
I love how Jeremy Irons's character says 24 months instead of 2 years. It's a fine detail we don't notice but says a lot more about how his mind works than most would think.
@@ShaneKeizer I think it tends to confirm Tuld's powers are beyond tutelage, that his auguring--and success as an industry leader--is rooted in a capital "U" Understanding of small cycles.
Nope, the real mastery here is that Jeremy Irons made us think he ever ate any food at all. Watch it again. He never takes a single bite. He's chewing air.
IF YOU REALLY WANT TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUTH, READ BELOW: 1. The gov't believes that black and Hispanic home ownership is too low 2. So a Clinton gov't organization called the Community Reinvest Act threatens banks with discriminatory lawsuits, if they don't fund black and Hispanic loans. 3. The banks agree to lend money. To clarify, an Hispanic gardener who claimed to earn $100k with no proof, was qualified for $200k loan. NINA loans (no income, no assets or also known as Liar loans were officially called subprime. 4. The banks sells, all their loans both good and bad to Wall Street Firms (Goldman Sachs, etc.) These loans are known as mortgage backed securities (loans) or MBS. These MBS are not the typical MBS sold for generations but contain risky subprime loans mixed. 5. Wall Street firms sell MBS to brokerages (Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard) 6 Schwab, Fidelity etc sell them to the public and all over the world 7. Blacks and Hispanics start defaulting on their loans, bringing down ALL the loans. 8. While Wall Street firms are vultures the real implosion could not have happened without the government forcing banks to do social engineering. Prior to this, one had to prove income, that's why in 200 years mortgage bonds were always solid.
@@kinnish5267 You have put it all in a nutshell Kinnish exactly as it happened. Its very clear to see what happens when dumbos in government dictate complicated financial dealings.....as government will do if we vote in socialism in 2020. Capitalism is flawed we know that. Socialism (ask anyone in Venezuela) is slow suicide because government feeds itself first. Great post.
@@kinnish5267 Actually, the amount of subprime loans that were forced onto banks by the CRA was quite small. The majority of those loans were made by banks free from any government pressure.
@@justicewarrior9187 this entire movie is a beautiful metaphor on human greed and short-sighted thinking. Sam needing money 'after all these years' goes to show that even the people who dedicate their entire lives to finance end up broke despite years and years of earning millions of dollars. It also goes to show that no matter how much you make, because of your greed you will also be needing more. Sam is standing there with tears because he can't understand how having been through so many financial collapses he still never learned from his mistakes and ended up in the same old place where he needs the money again, even after so many years.
@@PretentiousStuff exactly what I wanted to comment. If I may add, this goes to show that humans are not really "intelligent", we're just clever. Deep down we're still governed by base instincts that remain from thousands of generations when we were just cavemen. What I'm saying is, whenever we feel like we're doing something really smart, we should really take a break and look at it critically. But we don't. I wonder how many generations it'll take before that behavior improves.
Go back to "Boiler Room", and you will see the same illustration of financial instability for people working in this sector. They used a term that I cannot use here to describe how some of them have Ferraris & they do not have the money for the gas at times!
@@TheNefastor Exacto! It starts with your Spirit and Soul as of "now". Am "I" using my "gifts" for Yahwehs (God) intended "purpose right now"? Great book: Richest Man in Babylon Some people can discern a persons Spirit, most can not & don't want to "right now". Am I one of the 144,000 mention in bible? Matthew 6:24- No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon (money). ~Bachelor I stand...still in retirement...Bossin' who?
An absolute masterpiece of a movie great cast great actors and fabulous script i had forgotten about it till a clip came up on UA-cam definitely a must for move lovers that appreciate a great story 👍👍
Another incredible aspect of this scene is that it’s the moment Sam realized that he is an incredibly small thinker, discovering that they do absolutely nothing to influence the market with anything they sell, but rather simply react to human nature regarding finance. John is thinking far beyond the present situation and even feels a bit better about it, suggesting he already sees light at the end of the tunnel. While Sam is distraught over the immediate situation and how it will affect the world and the firm. The difference is massive and perfectly portrays the level of thinking of a long time executive with decades of exposure to the market.
That’s just false though. Massive firms like this absolutely do influence the market. The entire premise of the movie is that their fire sale kicks off a recession John’s a great orator, but his rationale is quite poor. “The percentages stay exactly the same”…no they don’t. After nearly every recession, we’ve seen a concentration of wealth toward the top. People like john get to increase their share of the wealth by buying the dip. A dip that they created! Meanwhile, the general populace loses out, and now there are more “starving dogs” in the world.
@@beastmode1647 " The entire premise of the movie is that their fire sale kicks off a recession." Funny. Wrong, but still funny. The recession was already happening, they just made the world aware of it as they left before the deluge.
@@bugwar5545 Watch the movie again. Upper-level management all knew that they had massive, unsustainable positions in trash securities. But they didn’t care because they were making big $. Eric dale got fired at the very beginning of the movie…why? Because he pointed it out! Once the 20-something junior analyst figured it out, the top guys decided it was time to pull the plug. And in doing so, they, in sam’s own words, “killed the market for years to come”
@@beastmode1647 Thank you for replying. Eric pointed nothing out. He was fired before he even knew what was happening. As for being responsible for killing the market, the market was already dead. They just pointed it out to the world. If they had done nothing, then the market still would have crashed, and soon. As was pointed out, there were many other firms that had the same data, and would have put the pieces together quickly. The only real decision to make was whether to try and continue as if nothing was going to happen, or sell it before someone else started getting rid of those securities. If they had hung on, then they risked going belly up when another firm got out. If they sold it, then they took a loss, but not a fatal one, and did much better than those who waited.
@@bugwar5545 One of my favorite things about margin call is that it doesn’t hold your hand. There’s a lot of subliminal, implied stuff. Makes the movie worth rewatching It’s heavily implied that eric dale was fired for pointing out the firm’s overleveraged position in trash MBSes. Rewatch the clip “eric dale is fired” on youtube. He learns that sarah robertson fired him, then reacts by saying “i knew i shouldn’t have gone to her LAST YEAR” Before dale leaves the building, he gives a flash drive to peter sullivan (the junior analyst). Sullivan put the icing on the cake, finishing dale’s model and proving how trash the MBS position was. But it was dale who baked the cake Later, in the meetings, there’s more evidence of upper management knowing ahead of time. Eric dale warned them a year ago, but they didn’t care because they were making too much money. It was only when a junior analyst saw it was about to explode that they did something. And that something “killed the market for years to come” You could absolutely argue that upper management had a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. They weren’t the only firm building up trash positions. They weren’t the only firm ignoring their risk management department. So if they didn’t do the fire sale, their stock could’ve gone to $0 But it’s just not true that they were bystanders. They had a significant effect in inflating the bubble and they had a significant effect in popping it. Multi billion dollar buy/sell orders move the market
Leave out the F-Bombs, though. Oh...maybe not. By the time the little darlings have got to High School the internet has exposed them to worse than the gratuitous use of the famous four-letter word.
@@MarsFKA you might be adding those F-bombs yourself. It's August 2nd, Sunday 2020. Margin Call and The Big Short are gonna be in my hands before this week is through! Long range thinking has me wishing the movie Smoking Aces with the little woman with the 50 cal was paired with Sylvester Stallone in Last Blood protecting his ranch perimeter and his tunnel system filled with traps and weapons paired with Keanu Reeves in John Wick movies to keep the crazy people at bay come this election 2020!
“It’s just money. It’s made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don’t kill each other just to get something to eat” god the tragic truth of that statement hit me hard. Smh.
Notice at 2:26 how Spacey looks after Irons mentions fat cats and starving 'dogs'. His look to the right was propably the moment he remembered he needs the money for his dog.
I think at 1:50 Spacey takes his glasses off when the reality speech starts. He symbolically takes his blinders off, and sees what he has been doing for what it really is: greed. Then, he gets up from the table and puts the glasses back on and agrees to stay with the firm, for the money. When, in fact, that's the same as it's always been: a war between fat cats, and starving dogs. He agrees to remain a fat cat. He is a great actor. Probably all his movies will suffer in retrospect because of his alleged sexual behavior with underage males. I really liked his acting in the movie, The Usual Suspects.
It's not due to greed. It's due to opportunity. We are biologically programmed to have a percentage of people act out their traits more efficiently than others. This in turn creates disparity, it's completely unavoidable. In trying to control it the outcome we bring about far worse than if left alone.
@@kennethburmeister8119 you are wrong. leave it uncontrolled and you eventually get a cancer in the society. after all, it has been exactly these cancer cells that lead to all the mentioned crises... to the demise of work of hundreds of millions of people. bad luck, i guess, for those who didn't seize the opportunity.
@KennethBurmeister - Yes, our species throws up exploiters, murderers, predators, serial killers. But the idea that we should just leave them to get on with it and praise their efficiency is - if you consider it - insane. Do you truly believe that passing laws against murder makes the murder problem worse? That taking steps to deter and de-enable child abusers exacerbates child abuse? Who knows, you may do. It's remarkable what we can convince ourselves of...
doesn't he say, "you can't stop it, it's the same thing over and over again," as if he's talking about god, or something..not himself. He's just playing the percentages
I have my own company. You can't even imagine how much this scene has given me. Whenever something goes wrong, I tell myself: I am starting to feel a little better about this whole thing. When it's bad, I have the courage to repeat it, the louder I shout, the better I feel. And after a while the trouble disappears.
If you have a hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as a personal wealth cushion as Tuld surely does, even a great fall would result in no appreciable injury. How many real life industry titans have sunk ships only to soon invited to again captain?
Tuld is the kind of person that has lived such a comfortable life for so long that he's become out of touch with reality. Many politicians, entrepreneurs, CEOs etc are just like that in the real world. They're the people that run this world unfortunately
He lives a comfortable life simply because he is in touch with reality. The reality of the successful. When he loses touch with that, he becomes unsuccessful.
This scene tells you exactly how the real world works. It's just people trying to game each other for more money. Always has and always will be. This is what keeps the wealth pyramid constant with many poor at the bottom and a few rich at the top. The percentages stay roughly the same but the players change.
This comment is underrated. Especially in today's economic climate. All these people commenting who haven't had to face these decisions haven't got a clue. When the question is whether it's you or them that gets screwed the answer will always be them. I'm now faced with the decision of firing half my team or we'll all lose our jobs.
the percentage is NOWHERE NEAR the same, the modern middle class is bigger than it ever has been, however market cycles like what are described here (post great depression) are contributing to shrinking it again. despite what this idiot depiction of a ceo would have you believe, the world can be made a better place if not for the greedy jerkoffs who aren't being held accountable. this movie is insanely stupid and does so much terrible work to glorify awful, greedy, short sighted, scum of the earth bankers, it makes me want to puke.
At the end of the scene you realise that Sam only threatened to leave. He knew they needed him to stay and would offer to continue him and pay him well. He only had to pretend to care what Irons was saying. It was something he long knew but listened anyway. Or else he would have really quit.
This movie is a brilliant masterpiece on so many levels, yet you rarely hear of it. Millions of people are missing out on something truly exceptional. Too bad.
@i get it My mother is a nurse. She has tried to retire every year for 6 years, and they just keep giving her more money. A lot of industries will do ANYTHING to avoid putting more benefits plans on their books.
The sophisticated doublespeak in this movie is ironic perfection. Jeremy Iron's character said there are two ways to succeed in this business, one is to be smart and the other is to cheat, and he doesn't cheat. Then practically in the next breath, he's explaining to the room exactly how they're going to cheat, but with such a civil tone, it doesn't feel like the dirty, underhanded cratering of the market they're getting ready to launch. Then Kevin Spacey's character basically tells his staff their careers and reputations are ruined, but if cheat, they'll mitigate some of the damage to themselves individually, and if they cheat successfully as a group, they'll get an even sweeter deal. No pressure!
Hate to break it to you, but they didn't cheat. The market is going to crater. No one can prevent it. The question is will they evacuate before the boom, or stick around and be part of the debris.
I always dislike movies/series when they have food on the plate but dig in. And here we have Jeremy Irons giving a condescendant speech about money all the while eating and being perfectly audible. Talent.
Yeah, that's right. Lower the video volume, then blast our ears off with your little closing clip. Superb.
This is the best comment here.
Ha ha...it killed my ears.
@@thelegacyofgaming2928 True.
Yeah, I was struggling with that too, not to be unfair as the actors are relatively speaking low volume, but it should have been handled much better here and raised a bar or two for the conversation.
I almost have to have headphones on to hear every syllable clearly.
Seriously I had to plug into an amp just to hear this. Ending clip rip
McConaughey's two tables over with Leo, thumping his chest.
You win the internet today lol 😂
and Gordon Geko too :)
@@simonburkeisable was that the Windows on the World restaurant?
Hum hun hum hum hum
@@MrRooibos123 Windows on the World was in the World Trade Center and was destroyed when the WTC was attacked in 2001, so it was not around in 2008.
What a piece of dramatic art this is. Both actors are superb. And Jeremy irons , eating while talking, is outstanding. You don’t lose your appetite for this, he seems to be saying. Have a steak, bite it. Chew it. Eat it. After all this is what all is about. Eat or be eaten. He conveys the message superbly.
Eat or be eaten. Clever.
He is also saying “your whine, or my wine?”
It's also a display of great acting skill because there's only so many takes you can do in a row when every one of them involves you devouring steaks. You make a mistake and you have to loosen your belt another notch lol.
I think he’s just eating food and you’re looking for a meaning that’s not there, pareidolia
@@liqritrs8391 Loss of appetite is a symptom of stress. Irons character isn't phased one bit despite chaos being unleashed on them all.
Have you noticed that Irons is devouring his meal, while Spacey has nothing in front of him? This turmoil does not affect Iron's appetite, where as Spacey cannot stomach anything. Great take on the psychological aspect of nerves!
Sociopaths lack empathy. That's the sign of a "great" CEO.
@@matthewdunham1689 How can Americans be so dumb?
Matthew Dunham iron is clearly the greater man.
Carlos C. Care to elaborate
To be fair Irons was already eating and Sam interrupted his meal.
I love Kevin Spacey’s almost imperceptible flinch when Jeremy Irons mentions starving dogs.
He realizes that he has lost track of his dying pet (who by now, is certainly gone) in all this turmoil.
I completely forgot about that part. Thanks. I need to watch this movie again.
Actually, he's probably thinking about the dog he killed with his bare hands in the opening scene of House of Cards.
He buries the dog in the final scene.
Thanks. I went back and noticed it. :-) Good eye.
@@whitenoisejack no more pain 😂
He says "it's just money" and at the end Spacey ends with "I need the money". This is so well written. It's not just money. People need this to live.
Yup.
Easy for Tuld to say when he has a fuckmothering *seven digit income.*
@@davecrupel2817 that’s conservative
His wife took everything in their divorce.. probably paying insane alimony.. just examples of successful people being screwed in divorces
But Scar is exactly right. Money is a means to keep us from killing each other for food. Money has value because we put our FAITH in it that someone will take it when a debt is owed. Forget about Christianity and every other religion on the planet, the worlds economy is hands down the largest religion and we are all a bunch of suckers for believing in it. But just the right amount of money and comfort keeps us from storming the castle.
@@davecrupel2817 shut up working class
Spacey is massive as usual, but god damn, Jeremy Irons just towers over the entire cast
Spacey is one of my favourite actors ( i think his roles in the usual suspects and K-Pax being his finest) but Irons is in a different class.@@sarahcameron9401
@@bilbobaggins2387 what about the fact that he's a sicko who probably messed with an underaged teen boy???
Irons kills it. I can feel his back story. Working class english background but had brains and a ruthless streak set off making it big in the United States and rest of the world.
@@ca8824 nobody knows for sure. But even if it's true we can't deny the fact that he's a great actor.
100%. Irons takes over most films. Just incredible
He missed out two key infamous crashes:
1720 - South Sea Bubble - featuring Sir Isaac Newton and his top quote
1998 - Long Term Capital Management and the Russian Default
Otherwise here's the list of events he goes through, I always wanted to look them up in detail:
1637 - Dutch Tulip Mania
1797 - US Land Speculation Bubble
1819 - First Great Depression
1837 - US Commercial Paper (Specie) Crisis
1857 - First Global Economic Crisis
1884 - US Marine National Bank panic
1901 - First US Stock Market Crash
1907 - Knickerbocker Panic
1929 - Crash and start of Great Depression
1937 - Roosevelt downturn
1974 - Bretton Woods / Nixon Shock Global Crash
1987 - Black Monday - Program Trading Crash
1992 - Recession
1997 - Asian Crisis - Soros 1B Malaysia/Bank of England trade
2000 - DotCom Bust
Missed out on the Panic of 1893 (Commodity Crash), too
Soros caused the ‘92 British pound crisis, ‘97 Thai baht crisis to cause the near successful regicide of the Thai monarchy, and the 2022 Sri Lankan rupee crisis to induce a regime change where Gota was replaced by Ranil
He literally forgot the biggest crash of the 19th century which was the panic of 1873
Yep
@@chrishall9583 Which one did JP morgan rescue?
After listening to Irons' character rattle off those prior market crashes, does anybody have any doubt that Irons' character could give a detailed description on every single one of them without blinking an eye? Dude is wicked smart.
in spite of what he said earlier in the movie, I think that he DID get his job because of his brains...
"Learned" not necessarily smart.
@@notmareelnam7545 intellectual vs intelligent
The smartest dude I know would never give himself that title. Intelligence is the most ironic curse. The more you know, the more you don't know.
...memorizing several numbers and some events associated to them is wicked smart?? Word did get dumber more than i thought..
"It wasn't brains that got me here I'll assure you that"
*proceeds to fire off every economic bubble to burst from the past 4 centuries without missing a beat*
People at the top only know how to think in the long term.
lol "bubble" 1:58 - he's just listed every engineered fleecing of investors for the past 200 years, and you ppl dont even realize what he's saying
@@rickdeckard1075 Not every bubble was engineered, only most of them.
@@edwardheaney3641 well, every one of them was a Minsky moment, economic stability creates unstability and crash, stable growth increases leverage and leads to bubble. So simple and we've known since the 70s, in fact Minsky based it on Keynes who was totally misinterpreted, and so on. Throw in a bit of Eugine Fama with his Gaussian bell-curve distribution of the markets where a crash is a one in a million year event we see every 7 years - closer to a Pareto-Levy fat tail distrubution Taleb has proven along with Mandelbrot. Anyways. Bobby Axelrod knows this all.
@@rickdeckard1075 best scene ever in any finance / economics movie indeed, only for insiders
Its just money....just pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other to get something to eat. Brilliant acting.
It's not acting, it's the ugly truth. You missed the "It's made up." Capitalism is a system to trade stuff (most of which we dont really need), for money. With this part I am fine, because we would not only be killing each other to get something eat. Were there not something as a job to keep ourselves busy, humans would find tons of reasons more to kill eachother. The part I really dont like is that this stupid system destroys our planet.
Kazimierz Garshin Your definition of capitalism seems incorrect. The device I'm watching and commenting this wasn't send by god or a planned product of another system. It is a product of a system which allocated resources to something which promised financial success for its inventor and/or manufacturer. That stupid system created an environment where your ancestors decided to settle down, own land or a house maybe and produce offspring. Because in the long process of human developmen the profitable ideas prevailed and the neanderthal who kept on collecting berries instead of using tools to hunt eventually removed himself from the genepool. YOU are part of the system, too my friend :)
@@kazimierzgarshin3924 Yes obviously paper money, gold and essentially everything has the value that we as a society put on it. But it's still technically real. I mean paper money when it comes down to it is a physical representative of work/value so as to be traded more efficiently. I mean the only real alternatives to these representative/symbolic money systems is what barter/trade or communism?
Definitely not brilliant acting, just stating what we already know.
@@kazimierzgarshin3924 Our planet is fine. It's not going anywhere. We are. This stupid system as you call it has lifted untold millions out of poverty and allowed technology that makes dirty things like burning coal and trees for heat into clean things like boiling water to turn a generator from a nuclear reaction.
"you know, I'm starting to feel a little better about this whole thing."
Hahaha. Such a great job by Jeremy Irons.
Yes because Kevin got the job done, now he feels better 😂
the way Spacey can communicate emotional without saying anything is truly remarkable. great speech from Irons too.
Marie Adams x
Absolutely. From 2:07, his eyes just say everything...
Sad that such a talent resides in a predator.
Two veteran actors in a room. No music, no special effects. No set dressing. No costumes. Just good writing and talent.
Filmed in 17 days.
This scene needed a car chase and Vin Diesel
Why would there be special effects in this scene? You act like movies today don't have conversations in them anymore. You are comparing a drama to an action movie to prove a point that doesn't exist. LMAO!
Watch 'Glengarry Glenross'. The entire movie is like that.
@John Reb He's not far wrong. Margin Call is pretty damn good.
Jeremy Irons just spilled out every Economic Bubbles in the history of Market . Brilliant !
And there will be more in the future.
Missed the one in 1921. Central bank or government did nothing and it was boom time again in 18 months. Not quite so in 1929. Hoover did all the things and it lasted over a decade.
Missed a really big one at the beginning of 19th century in america
Hoover should have butted out and let the chips fall where they may, like Harding did in 1921. He instead tinkered with things outside his element (a la Roosevelt), and effectively bled a wounded patient into the Great Depression.
And I think Irons missed one major bubble...the Panic of 1873.
@@sarahcameron9401 Thank you
Its ok. He isn't there cos if his intelligence. ;)
This Movie is so underrated.
One of the best movies
Yes and while I liked the Big Short, this movie is better.
@@mikepetitti They show different sides of the coin. The Big Short is consumer/exterior focused, Margin Call is a movie about what went on inside the Investment Banks.
@@xNamsu Yeah - I understood that from watching the movies when they came out years ago. I just think Margin Call is a better movie.
It has a credible atmosphere just like HEAT (1995)
Sir Isaac Newton back in 1720 was also wiped out by the “South Sea Bubble” and he said:
“ I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of man”.
He never said that
@@tiendoan1333 He might as well have. He (mostly) invented differential calculus, but markets are chaotic. It wasn't until stochastic calculus and chaos was figured out over 200 years later that people started to understand how to model markets.
@@drewmandan And yet people still makes the same mistakes, because greed still rules supreme
@@22espec It's not greed, its chaos (in the mathematical sense). Markets are fractal; no one can tell the difference between a small correction and a big correction. Think of it this way: predicting the market is the same type of problem as predicting the weather.
@@drewmandan What do you think of the current market? I honestly don't get it at all.
How this film managed to stay under the radar is astonishing 😲
I can't help but wonder if part of the reason it stayed under the radar is because it sought to tell people things that were hard to hear.
@@toddjeffrey1772 No - there were no superheroes or explosions.
It's too smart for the average person. I know, that's sad, because even this movie has been dumbed down and emotionally exaggerated for the big screen, but even after all that, it's still too smart for the average person.
I wish I didn't know how stupid the average person was, but I really do know. They mean well, they're nice... But they are stupid beyond even your lowest expectations, and if you don't keep it to yourself, no one will ever want to talk to you or do anything nice for you.
I think the Big Short was more popular.
The Big Short was about the same subject, and actually depicted some of the real people involved. It was more brash and maybe more *slick* but I really like the tone and performances of this one. Not sure if I like it more or less, it's just different.
I love these two actors in this scene. So understated, and yet everything is stated. Perfect.
Shame one is a gay molester lol
savage haha
Adam Carr you could have said “one was a molester,” but choosing to say “gay molester” makes you a homophobe.
@@shavedfish no not really. There's 2 things, being a molester, and being gay. Kevin is both
@@adamcarr1920 and charged was he ?
Jeremy Irons is the man. Able to eat, hit the right notes in the script and still hold the entire scene all bearing in mind he is not a banker.
havent seen die hard huh? lol his best role
Most important things in this scene; the years he sums up, and why that indeed will never change.
Two GREAT actors at work. The expression on Kevin's face without saying a word is what GREAT acting is about......
his reaction after "you know, i'm starting to feel better about this whole thing" is so expressive
I think he realises that Tuld is right at some level, they are but tiny parts of a giant global economic machine and while it will hurt a lot of people inevitably when the markets crash yet again, it is totally unavoidable, so feeling guilty doesn't make sense, it was going to crash anyway eventually. This is the path that humanity and nature has chosen, boom and bust, repeatedly over and over again but the hope is that the strides that we make during the boom times will be worth the pain of the bust times.
I hate the movieclips music
you're not the only one
Yup, it's a mood killer and unbearably pretentious.
Yep - just destroyed my car speakers. (I know, why am I playing Margin Call while i drive... let alone leaving comments)
Why I avoid Movie Clips whenever possible
Reminds of being at the movies in the 90s. Intrusive. But okay.
The cast is dead-on! The characters are beyond real. The movie is probably underrated because it reflects real life back at ya in corporate, especially in the finance industry. This is probably one of my all-time favorite movies.
it's an anti-capitalist movie
This restaurant looks almost like the same one from the Wolf of Wallstreet scene.
Ebrown1985 Jared Kushiner own it
Tigran Abovyan you got it right! 666 5th ave
@@tigran1993 *Owned. Brookfield Properties now, apparently.
@@rasul407 That was one hell of a meal!
Top of the Sixes
Citadel, Melvin, Plotkin and Robin Hood feasting tonight.
we'll see how long it lasts
Not long now….
"Fat cats and starving dogs" - that's when Sam finally admits to himself that he is trapped in the system: He's a fat cat but goes hungry like a starving dog, always needing more money; and that is beautifully portrayed by him sitting in front of a juicy steak at a fine table and not having any of it.
🤣🤣
@@ZH8050 divorce probably bled him dry. When he buries his dog it looks like his wife has a nice set up
Jeremy Irons is a phenomenal actor.
50 years he's been great
He wants to leave but even after 40 years on Wall Street he still needs the money.
He had an expensive divorce. Shown at the end of the movie.
More like he had to pay off the Veterinarian bills for his Dog (he says earlier in the movie it was costing him thousands a day) and take care of his son who may have lost his job because of the crash.
@@shera1815 thousand a day is nothing to this guy... hes a senior MD right below the CEO at an investment bank...
@@mswoonc A thousand a day is something to this guy which is why he literally says "I NEED THE MONEY." Geez dude, are you even paying attention?
Often the way. These people get used to the ridiculous lifestyle, and all that huge paycheck gets used up quick.
I like how Irons gets caught in a little cycle of rattling off numbers, just like we saw earlier in the film with several of the other characters (the salary spending, the bridge hours). Really drives in just how much everything is just numbers to these guys - it's how they relate to the world.
"You learn to spend what's in your pocket."
Nope. There is a lot more they relate to. Numbers, like feelings, are easy to express.
Irons is one of those actors(like The genius Pete postlethwaite) who just dominates and commands every scene he is in. Unreal talent.
This is what true cinematography is. All about people and clean art of acting. Reflects Glengarry glenross in certain sense, this is pure awesomeness. Movie as it should be.
90% of this is writing.
The second time Jeremy Irons robbed Wall Street
_" I would not give up McClane for all the gold in your Fort Knox!"_
"Yesterday we were an army with no country. Tommorow we must decide which country we want to buy."
Somebody had fun!
@John Smith He didn't wreck the subway; he just wrecked the entire global economy.
Well Fort Knox is for tourists.
What is low key brilliant about this film is how it follows the chain of moral culpability from the bottom up, showing us how the powerful and rich maintain their status even when they completely fail to lead or provide any value to anyone, and how those who work with a sense of moral purpose get nothing in return for it.
Even more so is that Irons did not lie. The purpose of money. The benefits and the downfall of it. How it allowed for easier peaceful interactions with people and help their labor mean something. And how people chase it. Earn it and lose it.
"A turtle doesn't end up on the fence post by himself" - Bill Clinton. The rich know human nature and the poor are dumb enough to buy into it, thinking they can get rich without working for it. As this movie stated earlier, the players play and as long as everyone gets "theirs", they are all happy. We only begin to look for scapegoats, when our getting ours, blows up and then we are no different then the "rich" in that we look for someone to blame, instead of looking in the mirror to determine how we contributed to the game.
I think we let off the people at the bottom too easily. If they provide no value the bottom should stop giving them money.
"...and how those who work with a sense of moral purpose get nothing in return for it."
Yer funny.
Wrong, but still funny.
If you think that you are working with a moral purpose and getting nothing for it, then you ain't working with a moral purpose.
Who is morally culpable? The person who took the mortgage they could not afford to repay, or the person who gave them that mortgage?
1:03 I love how he goes effortlessly from "It isn't all for naught, it all matters" to "it's just money and it doesn't matter."
At the end of the day, Sam still have 2 mortgages to pay and he still needed the money.
that's why never borrow money... keeps you enslaved
@@trut52 divorces and taxes will do that to you. Debts don't matter. You don't take it with you when you die. It's just money and money spreads around.
This is the most honest and truthful scene in all of Hollywood movies.
You know what the real acting part in this scene is? That nose wipe from Jeremy at 1:10-1:20. For me, it is so much the character that it HAD to be in the movie. No matter how many takes it took, that made it. And it was a perfect, subtle addition of detail that really does it for me.
Just snorting the cocaine leftovers
That last statement “cause I need the money” speaks on a whole other level.
Everyone thinks having a bunch of money will solve all their problems, when all it really does is open them up to bigger problems they didn’t even know existed.
If you’re not content/comfortable/responsible with the money you do have, you’ll never be any of things no matter how much more you make
Like in The Aviator, Hughes told Hepburn's mother after telling Howard that they don't care for money, "That's because you have it."
The majority of ppl whose main concern is money, simply don't have it. That's how I see this scene.
The Observant Servant or the people who have money say it just paper
The Observant Servant actually, it applies to moneied people, too. That's all they think about, that's all they obsess about, whatever they have, they want more.
The Observant Servant .... No shit!! Your so right!!
money makes money. So if you have money, you don't need money.
@Greg F. Most of the transactions in the financial "markets" are speculation. The "markets" are not the heart of the economy. They are not NEEDED to finance the productive economy. That has been done with boring banking. Many not too large banks in cooperation with a central bank.
The unprecendented economic miracle after WW2 was mainly financed by a much more restricted and regulated bank sector. In the Soviet Union and satellite states with direct financing, they did have some successes given that the S.U. was a bitterly poor country, and the massive losses they had in WW1 and even worse in WW2.
The command economy, the top down micromanagement cost them a lot of productivity. Still they held their own in the arms race . All of that plus bringing the country forward to a - if modest - modern standard (literacy, healthcare, covering the basic needs) was financed w/o a stock exchange or private capital.
In the U.S. there was of course an active stock exchange, and maybe to some degree it played a role in the U.K. after 1949 - although I assume the recovery in the 1950s had little to do with the stock exchange and a lot with the bold investments of the social Democratic government. The key industries and railway and public transports as well as the healthcare services were publicly owned, and the mines and banks already existed.
In continental Europe the stock exchange did not play much of a role. Many key industries were nationalized (not in Germany for instance but their stock exchange was a lame affair), and they had a mix of some large and many small and medium sized companies who would not have the size to be listed anyways. But were the base for a thriving export industry.
The financial "markets" leech off the PRODUCTIVE economy. With leverage now allowed by laws and made possible by colluding central banks and regulators looking the other way. and with money created by laws. Money is a legal and societal construct.
in 2011 on a given day open derivatives in the U.S. were around 700 TRILLION USD - versus an U.S. GDP (that is over the period of 1 year) of between 18 and 19 trillion USD.
it is not productive, it is not necessary and it is dangerous.
The stock exchange always has been a playground for rich people trying to increase their fortunes w/o taking entrepreneurial risks - and that dates back to the 18th century.
When investing in a company (or back in the day in a ship for instance) a lot of things can go wrong, usually one stays invested for quite some time - or the project is going to fail if only for the lack of longer committment. And it needs expertise and oversight. Shares on the other hand can change hands quickly, w/o committment and w/o special interest in the company, the product, market, customer, new technologies or product innovation.
Large investors do more research - but the focus is on the expected profit and there is not really a committment to / interest for the product.
Europe was rebuilt after WW2 mainly w/o the money of the stock exchange, let alone that bets (derivatives) would have been allowed (by actors who have no stake in the underlying real- economy transaction).
These days a lot of the "trading" is done by computers. And most of these transactions are baits, to fool other particiants (or computers) in the game (to avoid the word market which is completely inappropriate).
I do not know WHY that is even allowed - except that politicians are bought and paid for and/or clueless. As long as the party goes on it is highly lucrative and the banks or the "investors" could not make enough money with giving out loans and investing in companies.
There a just not enough good, viable productive projects - not with the current global level of wages / disposable income of consumers. In the developing countries wages are kept as low as possible, and in the wealthy countries they have been pretty stagnant since the 1980s.
There a global over capacities for industrial production (for the current disposable incomes). The profits are huge and are amassed at the top (away from the bottom and middle income segment) - but there are not nearly enough investments for the fortunes (to produce more goods or services). So like in the Roaring Twenties, from 1990 - 2006 ,and now again the activities of Big Finance are to a large degree speculative.
If they would have to put down only a fraction of the money for the transactions they engage in, they would have to stop the insane game. The insanity of the derivates has been a little bit reduced (in 2011 I think some alarm bells rang - the volumes were reduced to 300 - 400 trillion open volume per day - but I think it then increased again).
In 2011 a major part of the bets were on interest rates btw (I assume most of it for U.S. government bonds), not even on currencies or commodities. See the article in zerohedge if interested.
Interest rates are SET by the central banks - it does not get more "government intervention" and "not a market" like that. Someone will have to explain to me how bets on the interest levels (that are set at will by central banks) are helpful for the productive economy.
Even so - if the "traders" would only have to make down payments of as little as 10 % of the open volumes, that would be 30 - 40 trillion on any given day in the U.S. - and only for derivatives. (The volumes on the stock markets are considerable but not nearly as much as for the bets).
There is not enough money in the system, and the banks - who have now become speculators themselves - should not be allowed to give them "credit" for these sums. Money has been very cheap, only recently the interest rates were increased.
Stocks are over-priced but there is still _some_ connection to the real world - despite high frequency trading. Of course every pretense of market or regulatory oversight is ridiculous. 30 minutes of trading would take the U.S. regulators 1 year to analyze - if they are lucky.
Jeremy Irons knocked this one out of the park, one of my favorite performances by him.
He states why money is unimportant and that its made up - only for Kevin Spacey to say he still needs it. In the end, principles are compromised because of the need to have money.
I worked for Lehman Brothers - on which this movie is basically based. I was there until the very end in 2008. I even had a meal in the Lehman executive dinning room (where this scene appears to have been set) less than a year before the events depicted here. This movie captures very much the essence of the time and place. This is one of my favorite films, it is haunting.
Yea...And Cramer on Tv was pounding the Desk saying "They don't know what they are doing!!"
I bet
"...fat cats and starving dogs..."
Sam's just put his dog to sleep !?!
My first impression of Jeremy Iron was as Alfred from DC’s Batman. THIS shone a new light on him for me, great actor
Essentially, they sold bombs that would go off in the arms of the customer, rather than themselves.
to be fair, their customers had also been buying bombs for years on end from them and competitors
ACTUALLY, to be fair and factual, THEY had been selling security used products distorting the risks by merging risk tranches and packaging them as low risk products when they KNEW they have high risks embedded in them that clients would never have the energy , time ability or ability dissect. They were milking it until the music stopped. It was fraud of such a high order and scale that nobody COULD go to jail, or the wonderful “system” irons talks about in sufferingly and self serving ly would collapse, and unfortunately take all of us down with it. Head they win, tails we lose...the system HAS to be fundamentally changed. The whole problem is NOBODY did a perp walk .It will happen again, soon.look at today’s market leverage and speculation and over valuation.and all these firms can front run all of us with the collocation high speed trading and AI.
Wouldn't be the first time that Jeremy Irons dealt with such devices in Wall Street...
Kevin Spacey's look from 2:07 just says everything about his character's feelings: tiredness, disgust... Such a fantastic actor (and I don't mean that Irons is not).
ever since I saw this movie I've been using the phrase "it's made up". lol
Agree. If you wouldn't mind transferring ur made up numbers to my made up account, that'd be great
Great delivery and hand-play by Irons. Stays with you.
It's that Jackie in the background
It is made up it digital currency it doesn’t exist at all
Everyone here should go ahead and give me their made up money.
Mom told me to never speak with my mouth full, but Jeremy Irons does it with such grace
The CEO never did anything so bad that it required Jeremy Irons in the role.
I keep coming back to this speech…”it’s just money” Makes me think about how much money affects our lives.
The dialogue is magnificent. "You did some good today..." Damn.
0:46 “jesus”. such an authentic reaction
its like Jeremy Irons literally became the character
Indeed he becomes one and the same persona, absolutely superb performing.
Masterclass acting by both Irons and Spacey.
Jeremy Irons as John Tuld is one of the finest examples of a necessary evil. A Machiavellian man who knows that for the survival of the company sometimes you have to do scummy things. Masterclass performance.
It is "just money" when you're wealthy, well connected, part of the elite and downturns have little effect. For everyone else, its rent, insurance, a car payment, child support, utilities, food, heat...all the necessities of life that thinly margin people from homelessness, despair, the unmooring of personal relationships.
"Money isn't everything, not having it is." -Kanye
I disagree. A downturn is the time to buy. It is the time to turn pieces of paper into real objects. it is the time to build up your assets. If you are the elite downturns is the time your climb. A time to buy when people are desperate to sell.
Vlad Xavier You’re missing the point of what he’s saying. You were lucky enough to have enough money to invest in other things. Many people don’t have that luxury and rely on money purely to survive in the economy because of how little they have. To those poor and lower middle class people, money is everything.
Abolish capitalism. Automate all the jobs., demonetize and dematerialize everything. And make money obsolete.
@Vlad Xavier at least you have $8000 you could (clearly) afford to lose.
Most of us dont have that.
I love how Jeremy Irons's character says 24 months instead of 2 years. It's a fine detail we don't notice but says a lot more about how his mind works than most would think.
What does it say then?
@@ShaneKeizer absolutely nothing
@@ShaneKeizer I think it tends to confirm Tuld's powers are beyond tutelage, that his auguring--and success as an industry leader--is rooted in a capital "U" Understanding of small cycles.
It is how you trade figures to make them more palatable .
This scene and the script should be shown in all the grade schools.
I'm distracted thinking about the Foley artists going ham with the cutlery on plate sfx
Two great actors at work here.
The fact that Jeremy Irons is actually eating his food mean that it only took him one or two takes to do this amazing scene.
@Shipmate No, it doesn't mean that.
@barry s Is that an attempt at humour or did you seriously not consider the possibility that they just cooked some MORE eggs??
Nope, the real mastery here is that Jeremy Irons made us think he ever ate any food at all.
Watch it again. He never takes a single bite. He's chewing air.
@@BrotherSergeantFlynn I didn't even notice that. @shipmate Look at his cheeks, they're the same during the whole scene.
@@BrotherSergeantFlynn that's a bloody good observation
Wow Jeremy Irons was phenomenal in this movie, especially this scene.
Great summation of how those "on top" think: "if I'm not screwing others over, someone else will, so might as well be me."
IF YOU REALLY WANT TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUTH, READ BELOW:
1. The gov't believes that black and Hispanic home ownership is too low
2. So a Clinton gov't organization called the Community Reinvest Act threatens banks with discriminatory lawsuits, if they don't fund black and Hispanic loans.
3. The banks agree to lend money. To clarify, an Hispanic gardener who claimed to earn $100k with no proof, was qualified for $200k loan. NINA loans (no income, no assets or also known as Liar loans were officially called subprime.
4. The banks sells, all their loans both good and bad to Wall Street Firms (Goldman Sachs, etc.) These loans are known as mortgage backed securities (loans) or MBS. These MBS are not the typical MBS sold for generations but contain risky subprime loans mixed.
5. Wall Street firms sell MBS to brokerages (Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard)
6 Schwab, Fidelity etc sell them to the public and all over the world
7. Blacks and Hispanics start defaulting on their loans, bringing down ALL the loans.
8. While Wall Street firms are vultures the real implosion could not have happened without the government forcing banks to do social engineering. Prior to this, one had to prove income, that's why in 200 years mortgage bonds were always solid.
ps don't use Hollywood movies to learn history, do real research
@@kinnish5267 You have put it all in a nutshell Kinnish exactly as it happened. Its very clear to see what happens when dumbos in government dictate complicated financial dealings.....as government will do if we vote in socialism in 2020. Capitalism is flawed we know that. Socialism (ask anyone in Venezuela) is slow suicide because government feeds itself first. Great post.
@@kinnish5267 Actually, the amount of subprime loans that were forced onto banks by the CRA was quite small. The majority of those loans were made by banks free from any government pressure.
Jeremy Irons in this scene is so great. You just hate him. The way he talks. His composure. The way he eats. Everything. Just perfect.
Jesus Christ that music that comes in at the end of the clip deafened me.
Jeremy Irons is the best actor of his generation. Forget your Pacinos and De Niros
1:52 - McConaughey looks over his shoulder, and yells, "What do you mean 1987??!"
"I need the money" best line ever
This scene captures the unflinching greed of humanity brilliantly.
greed or survival? They did the right thing. One just has a "guilty" conscience when he has been doing it for 40 years.
If you’re in a position to begin change the system and you choose not to, that stops being survival and starts being greed
"The percentage...
" hits hard
Severely underrated movie. The Big Short gets all th;e love and is masterful as well, but scenes like this are impeccably written and acted.
"we have to dance until the music stops" one of the most popular sentence in financial history
After all these years “I need the money”.
Where has he spent the money on??
@@justicewarrior9187 this entire movie is a beautiful metaphor on human greed and short-sighted thinking. Sam needing money 'after all these years' goes to show that even the people who dedicate their entire lives to finance end up broke despite years and years of earning millions of dollars. It also goes to show that no matter how much you make, because of your greed you will also be needing more. Sam is standing there with tears because he can't understand how having been through so many financial collapses he still never learned from his mistakes and ended up in the same old place where he needs the money again, even after so many years.
@@PretentiousStuff exactly what I wanted to comment. If I may add, this goes to show that humans are not really "intelligent", we're just clever. Deep down we're still governed by base instincts that remain from thousands of generations when we were just cavemen. What I'm saying is, whenever we feel like we're doing something really smart, we should really take a break and look at it critically. But we don't. I wonder how many generations it'll take before that behavior improves.
Go back to "Boiler Room", and you will see the same illustration of financial instability for people working in this sector. They used a term that I cannot use here to describe how some of them have Ferraris & they do not have the money for the gas at times!
@@TheNefastor Exacto! It starts with your Spirit and Soul as of "now". Am "I" using my "gifts" for Yahwehs (God) intended "purpose right now"?
Great book: Richest Man in Babylon
Some people can discern a persons Spirit, most can not & don't want to "right now". Am I one of the 144,000 mention in bible?
Matthew 6:24- No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon (money).
~Bachelor I stand...still in retirement...Bossin' who?
“It’s just money. It’s made up” best line in the movie
An absolute masterpiece of a movie great cast great actors and fabulous script i had forgotten about it till a clip came up on UA-cam definitely a must for move lovers that appreciate a great story 👍👍
At no point do you see Irons put food into his mouth, and yet you would swear he is eating a good churrasco or something.
Another incredible aspect of this scene is that it’s the moment Sam realized that he is an incredibly small thinker, discovering that they do absolutely nothing to influence the market with anything they sell, but rather simply react to human nature regarding finance. John is thinking far beyond the present situation and even feels a bit better about it, suggesting he already sees light at the end of the tunnel. While Sam is distraught over the immediate situation and how it will affect the world and the firm. The difference is massive and perfectly portrays the level of thinking of a long time executive with decades of exposure to the market.
That’s just false though. Massive firms like this absolutely do influence the market. The entire premise of the movie is that their fire sale kicks off a recession
John’s a great orator, but his rationale is quite poor. “The percentages stay exactly the same”…no they don’t. After nearly every recession, we’ve seen a concentration of wealth toward the top. People like john get to increase their share of the wealth by buying the dip. A dip that they created! Meanwhile, the general populace loses out, and now there are more “starving dogs” in the world.
@@beastmode1647 " The entire premise of the movie is that their fire sale kicks off a recession."
Funny.
Wrong, but still funny.
The recession was already happening, they just made the world aware of it as they left before the deluge.
@@bugwar5545 Watch the movie again. Upper-level management all knew that they had massive, unsustainable positions in trash securities. But they didn’t care because they were making big $. Eric dale got fired at the very beginning of the movie…why? Because he pointed it out!
Once the 20-something junior analyst figured it out, the top guys decided it was time to pull the plug. And in doing so, they, in sam’s own words, “killed the market for years to come”
@@beastmode1647 Thank you for replying.
Eric pointed nothing out. He was fired before he even knew what was happening.
As for being responsible for killing the market, the market was already dead.
They just pointed it out to the world.
If they had done nothing, then the market still would have crashed, and soon.
As was pointed out, there were many other firms that had the same data, and would have put the pieces together quickly.
The only real decision to make was whether to try and continue as if nothing was going to happen, or sell it before someone else started getting rid of those securities.
If they had hung on, then they risked going belly up when another firm got out.
If they sold it, then they took a loss, but not a fatal one, and did much better than those who waited.
@@bugwar5545 One of my favorite things about margin call is that it doesn’t hold your hand. There’s a lot of subliminal, implied stuff. Makes the movie worth rewatching
It’s heavily implied that eric dale was fired for pointing out the firm’s overleveraged position in trash MBSes. Rewatch the clip “eric dale is fired” on youtube. He learns that sarah robertson fired him, then reacts by saying “i knew i shouldn’t have gone to her LAST YEAR”
Before dale leaves the building, he gives a flash drive to peter sullivan (the junior analyst). Sullivan put the icing on the cake, finishing dale’s model and proving how trash the MBS position was. But it was dale who baked the cake
Later, in the meetings, there’s more evidence of upper management knowing ahead of time. Eric dale warned them a year ago, but they didn’t care because they were making too much money. It was only when a junior analyst saw it was about to explode that they did something. And that something “killed the market for years to come”
You could absolutely argue that upper management had a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. They weren’t the only firm building up trash positions. They weren’t the only firm ignoring their risk management department. So if they didn’t do the fire sale, their stock could’ve gone to $0
But it’s just not true that they were bystanders. They had a significant effect in inflating the bubble and they had a significant effect in popping it. Multi billion dollar buy/sell orders move the market
This movie and The Big Short should be MANDATORY viewing in every single high school in the country.
At the least to every business major in college, first semester.
Leave out the F-Bombs, though. Oh...maybe not. By the time the little darlings have got to High School the internet has exposed them to worse than the gratuitous use of the famous four-letter word.
@@MarsFKA you might be adding those F-bombs yourself. It's August 2nd, Sunday 2020.
Margin Call and The Big Short are gonna be in my hands before this week is through!
Long range thinking has me wishing the movie Smoking Aces with the little woman with the 50 cal was paired with Sylvester Stallone in Last Blood protecting his ranch perimeter and his tunnel system filled with traps and weapons paired with Keanu Reeves in John Wick movies to keep the crazy people at bay come this election 2020!
"We can't help ourselves."
Rung true to me more than any other statement. It's an addiction.
Love it how they use Tuld's meal as a suboncious symbol of greed and consummation. Not the first time in cinema, but a very satistying one.
“It’s just money. It’s made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don’t kill each other just to get something to eat” god the tragic truth of that statement hit me hard. Smh.
Why is it tragic a more efficient system of commerce has been developed?
@@Brian-js6me I guess that the original poster prefers barter?
Or going back to killing to get something to eat?
Notice at 2:26 how Spacey looks after Irons mentions fat cats and starving 'dogs'. His look to the right was propably the moment he remembered he needs the money for his dog.
I think at 1:50 Spacey takes his glasses off when the reality speech starts. He symbolically takes his blinders off, and sees what he has been doing for what it really is: greed. Then, he gets up from the table and puts the glasses back on and agrees to stay with the firm, for the money. When, in fact, that's the same as it's always been: a war between fat cats, and starving dogs. He agrees to remain a fat cat. He is a great actor. Probably all his movies will suffer in retrospect because of his alleged sexual behavior with underage males. I really liked his acting in the movie, The Usual Suspects.
It's not due to greed. It's due to opportunity. We are biologically programmed to have a percentage of people act out their traits more efficiently than others. This in turn creates disparity, it's completely unavoidable.
In trying to control it the outcome we bring about far worse than if left alone.
@@kennethburmeister8119 you are wrong. leave it uncontrolled and you eventually get a cancer in the society. after all, it has been exactly these cancer cells that lead to all the mentioned crises... to the demise of work of hundreds of millions of people. bad luck, i guess, for those who didn't seize the opportunity.
@KennethBurmeister -
Yes, our species throws up exploiters, murderers, predators, serial killers.
But the idea that we should just leave them to get on with it and praise their efficiency is - if you consider it - insane. Do you truly believe that passing laws against murder makes the murder problem worse? That taking steps to deter and de-enable child abusers exacerbates child abuse?
Who knows, you may do. It's remarkable what we can convince ourselves of...
doesn't he say, "you can't stop it, it's the same thing over and over again," as if he's talking about god, or something..not himself. He's just playing the percentages
@@kennethburmeister8119 No, even in the hunter gatherer days, those who did wrong got punished for it.
the big CEO felt a lot better, because he was the first to react to unloading the thrash assets, definitely not Lehmann brothers but Goldman Sachs
I have my own company. You can't even imagine how much this scene has given me. Whenever something goes wrong, I tell myself: I am starting to feel a little better about this whole thing. When it's bad, I have the courage to repeat it, the louder I shout, the better I feel. And after a while the trouble disappears.
If you have a hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as a personal wealth cushion as Tuld surely does, even a great fall would result in no appreciable injury. How many real life industry titans have sunk ships only to soon invited to again captain?
What does your company specialize in?
@@cat3584 Craft
"A fool and his money are lucky to get together in the first place..." -- Gordon Gekko 1987 (from the movie, Wall Street)
Tuld is the kind of person that has lived such a comfortable life for so long that he's become out of touch with reality. Many politicians, entrepreneurs, CEOs etc are just like that in the real world. They're the people that run this world unfortunately
He lives a comfortable life simply because he is in touch with reality.
The reality of the successful.
When he loses touch with that, he becomes unsuccessful.
Two terrific actors on scene. Performing arts at his finest.
It's so hard watching Kevin Spacey movies now, but his talent is undeniable
Very true
" How did we F this up so bad?" Words uttered by no finance guy ever. Too smart to not be aware of the exact implications of every move
Spaceys sat at the table looking at Jeremy Irons and thinking ... Jesus this guy is justing amazing, you can see it in his eyes.
This scene tells you exactly how the real world works. It's just people trying to game each other for more money. Always has and always will be. This is what keeps the wealth pyramid constant with many poor at the bottom and a few rich at the top. The percentages stay roughly the same but the players change.
This comment is underrated. Especially in today's economic climate. All these people commenting who haven't had to face these decisions haven't got a clue. When the question is whether it's you or them that gets screwed the answer will always be them. I'm now faced with the decision of firing half my team or we'll all lose our jobs.
the percentage is NOWHERE NEAR the same, the modern middle class is bigger than it ever has been, however market cycles like what are described here (post great depression) are contributing to shrinking it again. despite what this idiot depiction of a ceo would have you believe, the world can be made a better place if not for the greedy jerkoffs who aren't being held accountable. this movie is insanely stupid and does so much terrible work to glorify awful, greedy, short sighted, scum of the earth bankers, it makes me want to puke.
At the end of the scene you realise that Sam only threatened to leave. He knew they needed him to stay and would offer to continue him and pay him well. He only had to pretend to care what Irons was saying. It was something he long knew but listened anyway. Or else he would have really quit.
Give me a steak and a 55 Margeaux and I will give you a performance worth remembering. Jeremy Irons.
This movie is a brilliant masterpiece on so many levels, yet you rarely hear of it. Millions of people are missing out on something truly exceptional. Too bad.
I've always liked Kevin Spacey as an actor.
Thats all I'm going to say about him.
Imagine being in a position. Where the boss wants you stay.
@i get it My mother is a nurse. She has tried to retire every year for 6 years, and they just keep giving her more money. A lot of industries will do ANYTHING to avoid putting more benefits plans on their books.
The sophisticated doublespeak in this movie is ironic perfection. Jeremy Iron's character said there are two ways to succeed in this business, one is to be smart and the other is to cheat, and he doesn't cheat. Then practically in the next breath, he's explaining to the room exactly how they're going to cheat, but with such a civil tone, it doesn't feel like the dirty, underhanded cratering of the market they're getting ready to launch. Then Kevin Spacey's character basically tells his staff their careers and reputations are ruined, but if cheat, they'll mitigate some of the damage to themselves individually, and if they cheat successfully as a group, they'll get an even sweeter deal. No pressure!
Hate to break it to you, but they didn't cheat.
The market is going to crater. No one can prevent it.
The question is will they evacuate before the boom, or stick around and be part of the debris.
Dear God, imagine the life review these guys will go
through when they go down the tunnel of light.
I always dislike movies/series when they have food on the plate but dig in. And here we have Jeremy Irons giving a condescendant speech about money all the while eating and being perfectly audible. Talent.
He never took a single bite through the whole scene, he's chewing air. Superb acting.
Why so loud music in the end, it is very irritating!!!!