This crash detroyed our family. We lost our retail shop, we lost our home of 20 years, and we lost our construction company. We still havent recovered fully. Mom became suicidal and dad had to come out of retirement and work a fedex delivery job. I was stuck working odd jobs for years. A terrible time that destroyed everyone.
People today tend to just forget that not that long ago millions of ppls lives were wrecked, some irrevocably, by a series of faraway investment banking decisions and the awful political response to it. Most of the people who actually fucked everything up walked away, the politicians walked away pretending they saved the world, and the economic system was permanently altered for the worse via a massive upwards transfer of wealth.
@@EdriczZ_ yes. All were lost in the same month. The family home went into foreclosure and we couldn't get it back. Ended up moving to 4 different places in a year before settling in the current home. I didn't have a grasp on the world ongoing because I was in my late teens enjoying life and then BOOM! No home, no job.
Definitely also worth watching Margin Call which tells the story from the perspective of an investment bank at the start of the financial crisis. Incredible cast with Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Zach Quinto, Demi Moore and others. Put together with The Big Short it really helps understand the whole 2008 crisis.
It's a decent movie but I feel The Big Short is much more entertaining and cuts to the point. The banks got greedy. They need to create laws and rules and the banks just need to be able to play in that space, but slowly they're pulling back those regulations and we saw it happen with that one bank a year or so ago...
I was working at Wells Fargo Institutional Trust Services at the time. I remember walking into work that morning and being told to direct all calls to corporate legal. Watching Bear Sterns fall in real time was surreal. Next was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac deals and then Lehman Brothers going bankrupt. It was wild. We kept wondering if we would be next. I was so stressed out by the end of the year that I got out of the financial industry.
Mark Baum is based off Steve Eisman, whose personal life tragedy was changed for the movie. Instead of his brother commiting suicide, his baby son died after his nanny rolled on top of him during sleep. In the scene where Burry asks for the banks cups, apparently he was thinking the Banks would collapse so he thought they would be a cool souvenir/keepsake to have.
The fun thing about the mugs - he's not taking free mugs.... he's collecting trophies. He knows once the defaults happen, the mugs will probably be all that's left.
I wanted to see them all in an office cabinet. Especially in his moment of doubt, and him just seething in rage at the corruption. When he left at the end, he should have put them all in a box and walked out.
The 4th wall breaking is used in order to constantly pull the viewer out of just passively watching a movie and serves as a continual reminder that this really did happen and still needs to be addressed.
@@Fungo4 This is almost the main joke of the scene really. It's info EVERYONE should know but normally find too boring. I thougnt the scene with Mia Kunis gambling and people taking on the sidebets was another way they used that technique to teach a boring subjedcg.
One of my favorite examples of great writing happens in this movie: it explains to you how big a $15 billion exposure is not by weighing the script down with exposition, but just have Mark frame the question by asking '3? don't tell it's more than 4.' Just like that, you understand it's huge.
It was great acting by Steve Carrell how he acted annoyed when Kathy said she couldn't share that info. It portrays "screw all the guidelines and formalities, this is Armageddon, I caught you guys in a lie, and you need to tell me right now"
The MVP for me was Christian Bale, who really nailed some of the mannerisms of someone on the autism spectrum (which Michael Burry (the guy Bale is playing) has been diagnosed with). Having been diagnosed myself, his performance hit especially hard for me. I'm so glad he got nominated from this cast.
Now that you've seen The Big Short, you should definitely watch Margin Call as a companion film to this one - it's a look at the other side of the table, at what happened in that big empty bank office one day prior when everyone still had their jobs. An acting powerhouse, just incredible performances scene after scene after scene.
The incredible irony of the American Securitization Forum annual meeting that happens in Las Vegas always was the icing on the cake. This movie radicalized me.
Curious. This happen because of radical liberal banking policy. The radicals attempted social equity through sub-prime lending. While attempting to prop up the economy with bad loans. The failure was moving away from conservative lending policies.
I'm so glad you guys watched this. It's a scary movie and people unfortunately need to be aware that the banks are NOT on your side. I suggest y'all try "Margin Call" in the future.
Margin Call is about a low level accountant who spots what's about to happen, tells his bosses, who arrive in their helicopters for an emergency board meeting, and work 24/7 shifting all the bonds off their books and onto any and all clients gullible enough to believe their lies. They bend and stretch the law to breaking point to make sure by the time the market opens and the world ends, their books are clean. It's a sickening watch, made worse by having Kevin Spacey in it, but an amazing piece of writing.
Yeah, that was a dark period. My wife and I had a small business. We had 5 full time employees. We lost all of our clients but one. At one point in '08 an employee came to me and complained that we hadn't given her a raise in a year. I couldn't say anything to her at the time, but we only had about $250 left in our bank acct. We had to pay rent, pay bills etc. We blew through our savings almost immediately because we had virtually no revenue. But we always paid our employees. We never let anyone go. It was hard having to bite my tongue when this employee was ripping into me. I understood her need, but I admit it was hard to look her in the eye from then on. Early in Obama's presidency, he passed legislation that made getting a loan from the SBA almost automatic. We were afforded the loan, and were saved from bankruptcy in the short term. But the economic collapse was a gut punch and left psychological scars. First it was 9/11, then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the economic collapse in 07/08. Excuse my language, but what a fucked up first decade of the millennium. The second decade hasn't improved any. I admit that it has all made me more guarded, more pessimistic and more distrusting of people and the institutions they create to manage the collective. I love this movie but it does bring back the cold sweats whenever I see parts of it.
@@BarryHart-xo1oy It’s been hard, but nowhere near what much of the rest of the world has had to endure, and unfortunately they’ve had to endure it because of us. I remain cautiously optimistic that people will one day treat each other more empathetically, and offer a helping hand rather than a fist.
That's one of the most pervasive things about the 2008 crisis. Financial stress turned into familial stress and people became more hostile to each other. A sharp contrast to the financial euphoria and comfort of the early 2000's. Even NOW in 2024 money feels more scarce and less valuable than say in 2004. The crash really redpilled me against the pipe dream of America being the greatest country. It became a laughable and insulting comic-book fairytale to me by 2013. By 2021 with Covid corruption and fuckery, half of me was just hoping everything would collapse so people would be mad enough to do something about it.
Felix Biederman said it best in Fighting in the Age of Loneliness when 2008 came up, that a lot of people checked out afterward because the pain of seeing a system collapse never leaves you. America never really recovered from 2008, most of all psychologically.
I'M SO GLAD YOU GUYS WATCHED THIS! I'm that one person on Patreon that kept suggesting it. :D It's such a unique blend of education and comedy, and with such an incredible ensemble cast. And yeah...it's also depressing and frustrating. I agree with other people here; Margin Call would be an EXCELLENT companion piece for this. To answer George's question at the beginning: the entire local branch of the company I worked for dissolved and I was unemployed for 1.75 years before crawling back to contract game testing because I couldn't get anything else. I was living with my parents again for a few years. I felt like I was starting over adulthood from scratch. The silver lining was that I eventually got a foot in the door for the career I now have, but it was really hard for several years.
The director of that documentary made an earlier one on the US-Iraq war called 'No End In Sight', not related but also worth a watch. The incompetence of the US adminstration during that war was breath-taking, like 'holy shit' level incompetence.
This is easily one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time. The humor, the teaching, the reality & the moral...you wouldn't expect it. "Spotlight" is a similar movie I'd recommend
I‘m from Germany and my Stepfather and my mother both lost their jobs and we lost our house. Fortunately we recovered after 4-5 years of true hardship, it was an awful time!
Yes, Europe actually took much longer for their economies to recover after this mostly US housing market crash. And Germany was probably one of the first if not the first. It's tougher when government is too much in the economy already because then they have fewer ways to counter a slow down in consumerism. China is really going to rocked when their housing market collapses. 1990s Japan all over again but effecting billions of people. And in many ways, Japan's economy has still never recovered. It's why I believe China will not surpass the US, or if they do, it will be both brief and a mix of make believe governmental numbers. In the US, real estate counts for 15%-20% of the GDP. In China, it is 30%. That is almost double. So a significant fall there will wipe out tens of millions of families' net worths at a minimum.
I was in Vegas right after it. I saw some houses going for under 100k. Our cab driver was a realtor. There were Wall Street protests around the U.S. that unfortunately changed nothing. Canada was doing fine financially and got dragged into the recession like many other countries around the world.
Canadian financial regulations were far stricter so we didn't feel the blow as hard as others, but it still hurt. We just refused as a nation to be bullied into loosening our financial system.
Occupy Wall Street unfortunately was sabotaged, because it was the first time in our lifetime that Americans started targeting the entities truly responsible for corruption, mass exploitation and profiteering. The banks literally coordinated with the FBI who labeled OWS a terrorist organization. It was our peaceful version of a medieval peasant revolt and we were crushed by the tyrants. Our founding fathers would be sick to death if they could have witnessed that.
I was 22, and had just started my trucking company. Diesel was like 5 bucks a gallon. My older brother and his family's house was foreclosed on by Country Wide even though they had offers for a short sale, Country wide wouldn't accept and foreclosed. Other than that, most of my family was fine, and my brother and his family bounced back and are doing fantastic now...If you've ever watched a movie and then watched it again and picked up on things you missed the first time, the Big Short is one of those movies. Even though they really tried to keep it simple and explain everything, it's still a movie you almost have to watch again to catch it all and understand it all. I also think it's an extremely important movie for people to see and more importantly understand.
That question ..I immediately got flashbacks to my dad and I experiencing homelessness together, Sleeping in his car. Eating dinner from the vending machine at his job, showering at family’s houses. Eating expired bread we found when our cousin took us in and ripping the mold off. My dad being so proud, Where our cousin would make dinner and offer us to come up and he’d say no. And we’d eat cafeteria sandwiches he got from work
I didn't personally notice it. My family was poor. We did own our land and house but it wasn't much. I just kept working delivering and recovering rent to own furniture. I finally quit that horrible business and on a whim joined the navy. That is when I saw the effects. So many people had joined the military that it started to push against the limits of how many recruits they could handle. By the time I was done with all my basic and advanced training there were people waiting 6 months or more just to get in an electronics class. This is bad because the Navy is now paying all these new people to sit around and sweep floors until they can be trained. It reminds me of my grandpa not really knowing the Great Depression was going on since they were poor as you could get. Just share croppers growing cotton and tobacco in Georgia. The middle class took the biggest hit from what I've seen.
I was working my first post-college job when 2008 struck, and I was among the first wave of layoffs. Thankfully I had some family support, so I didn't end up homeless, but it was rough. Still is. Beginning of the end, from where I've been sitting.
Writing this before watching: In 2008 I was 17 and in school. And in Germany. The way it affected me personally was just that I saw stuff about it on the news and learned about it in Social and Economics class. Can't say that much of it stuck. I just remember that it started with a US real estate bubble bursting and granting loans to people who never should've got one. My family wasn't really affected and neither was my extented family. But I have to add there that my entire extended family is upper middle class, as were my friends' families. I don't think any of them were really badly affected. Also (I think) Germany made it through the crisis pretty well, a lot of countries were much worse off. So yeah, going into this one almost as blind as Simone, let's see if I remember school correctly. Edit after watching: I guess I remembered the gist of it. We never went into all the details, probably because we didn't know about it at the time. All those terrible consequences....we just didn't feel them in my socio-economic bubble in 2008 Germany. Sure we learned that something bad was going on with the world-wide economy but to me it was never close enough to encourage more than a general "Fuck those bankers" attitude.
My parents moved from Colorado to Las Vegas because my stepfather is a Union electrician; the lists in Colorado were so backed up that he wouldn't have gotten a job here for years, and he was smart enough to keep himself on the lists in multiple states just in case, so he got to work on the one project in Vegas that didn't get canceled, the Aria. I moved in with them after dropping out of college, the strip was dead and empty; there were the skeletons of a half dozen uncompleted hotels throughout, old downtown was gross and unclean, and every fenced neighborhood was 70% empty. My uncles meanwhile had taken the plunge a few years before and opened their own construction company after two decades of working for other people, they went under and got into a fight so big that until pretty much five years ago when the eldest retired they still didn't talk to each other.
"Margin Call" and "Too Big To Fail" round out the 2008 financial crisis trilogy. Also "99 Homes" and "Inside Job" are a good watch to get an expanded view.
Love this movie! I was involved in commercial real estate during this time and a restaurateur. 6 weeks before the s#*t hit the rotary device, I was able to sell my restaurant. Thank God! As a commercial realtor and business broker, I had several deals fall through because banks and other lenders had started to hold back or negate previously approved loans to potential buyers and those who wanted to lease. Keep up the great reactions!
This is simply one of my favorite movies. I loved how you two appreciated the well executed balance of difficult information with comedy. Truly makes the movie palletable and allows me to recommend it to anyone.
Check out the movie Margin Call, it's about the same 2008 crash but from a banks perspective. Great film and has some excellent performances from Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons.
Thank you so much for doing this! I might be a bit of an outlier because I'm an economist and was in a major banking centre of the world learning finance industry security, but this is like p0rn to me. I could watch this every day. I don't know how many times I've watched this movie. For sure it's high praise when industry insiders love the movie about their industry instead of the usual which happens to other movies: insiders hating so many things ridiculously wrong in the movie. They got things right in this one, it was smart not to go in too deep into details, they sort of had different people _represent_ different institutions and characters. I literally know people exactly like almost every one of the characters in the movie...well, a few I've only known of from afar. And a few I've luckily not bumped into in those exact roles. I'm fortunate to not have mingled with insurance brokers. I rarely cry in movies but by the time they get to moving on from the insurance brokers I have tears in my eyes. (Not happy tears) (BTW the insurance brokers are doing wrong but they're not the worst people as they're simple salesmen just like most scammer-salesmen in all industries. They're the little guys you can't really blame...that much. The big guys want them to do exactly what they're doing, they set up the game for the little brokers exactly how they wanted them to act. Brokers do what they're allowed to do.)
This film changed how I want to be as a writer. Adam McKay wrote and directed this at the time he was known for comedies and to see The Other Guys tackle real financial issues in the film but in a comedic way, I felt, was his way of getting his feet wet to dive into this subject matter. Ever since this film, his work has been on a more dramatic end. It just goes to show you can change horses midstream.
About the semiotics ... what can you note about Burry at the beginning of the film--compared to the section that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what happened?
The scene where Mark Baum shares about his brother gets me every time. As someone who works a lot and who has a brother in an emotionally draining job, I want to learn from Mark's mistakes (even though I think the story is modified from the book).
I was very young at the time, almost a teenager, so I personally didn't understand the effects, but felt them. My stepdad's mood changed. Luckily, he bought the house a few years before this. He was into these home projects, gardening, the like. In 2008, it just stopped. He was working longer hours, yet getting less clients. My mom was working odd hours at this point. Tensions were high and eventually a divorce (there were other personal reasons of course). My best friend in the neighborhood moved out of city, yet his parents owned a business close by. I went to the most underfunded school in the area. A lot of my friends were just gone. It was so quiet.
Based on your appreciation of the writing in this and Moneyball, I highly recommend you watch Margin Call next. OutSTANDing cast and an impeccable screenplay.
I have been dying for you guys to react to this movie for ages so when I saw the thumbnail I was very excited. This is a great reaction to an amazing and horrific movie. Thank you.
The screenwriters for some reason changed Steve Eisman's name to "Mark Baum" for Steve Carrell's character here. And as hard as it may be to fathom, they thought that if they didn't change the personal tragedy that he and his wife endured, it would derail the movie -- it's that horrific.
Yes, Margin Call is also a good movie about the 2007 housing crash. In 2007 I was working at a large insurance company that had a lot of mortgage backed securities on their books. I left just before the mortgage crisis and that company took a huge hit when those bonds failed. Most of the people I worked with were gone in a year and the company itself downsized drastically. I remember how confident everyone who traded securities were about how secure their jobs were , bragging about the big houses they had and the expensive cars they drove. I left because the corporate culture there was really turning toxic and I just had had enough. But even so a lot of my work friends suffered in the collapse and had to move to find a new job or lost their houses.
I remember a podcaster described The Big Short in the perfect way. Basically “have you ever been so mad at someone that you can’t even argue with them anymore, so you just repeat what they say in a stupid voice? That’s what The Big Short feels like to me”
I was "lucky" during the 2008 collapse. I was young-ish (29), didn't own a home or anything, and had a very unimportant IT job with one of the state governments here in the U.S. The job didn't pay a lot, but it was stable, and had good benefits. I may have left that job for greener pastures, but for a couple of years there...there were no greener pastures. I have a lot of friends who really struggled during that time, stringing together contract gigs for a few months at a time (at most), with no real security. And they were the lucky ones, because even though it wasn't easy, they could still keep a roof over their head.
I feel your pain there. I was almost in the exact same position. And pretty much just got stuck in a dead-end but still stable position for many years. Stalled probably the best time for career growth to just keeping your head down for 5 years. But better stuck than struggling.
A great follow up to this would be "Margin Call" which shows in closer detail what companies actually did to trigger the collapse. Great Writing and a star cast.
I just turned 6 around the time the financial crisis started in 2007, I vaguely remember anything concrete, but I do remember I started getting hand me downs from the neighbor’s kid from 2008-2012ish, we started buying a lot more food in bulk and spreading it out over long periods of time, like multiple 50lb bags of rice in a closet. A bunch of our teachers got laid off due to budget cuts. It was a sad time
I joined the military in 2008. The amount of people who came in shortly after due to losing their houses and jobs was nuts. Right around the time of the surge in Afghanistan.
I remember driving to work Sept 2008 and the news came on the radio to announce Lehman Brothers had folded. I knew at that very moment that the world had changed and we were in for a rough time.
We're still living it. Councils have been underfunded for 16 years are now starting to run out of money and going bankrupt. It used to be called austerity, but that makes it sound like it should only be temporary, except so far it's lasted 16 years and seems to be getting worse not better. So far it's affected at last 1 generation, maybe more to come. bummer.. now here's Carol with the weather. Wall Street film is also good btw :)
I watched this unfold in slow motion as I'm plugged in to the news. I had to leave university, move home, and finally got a job at Walmart after being unemployed for two years. I was lucky, and got in a new store that had just been expanded, and where I ended up was the only county in the entirety of Ontario (and the whole of Canada east of Alberta) that actually had businesses hiring. Most of my coworkers had lost their 20-30 year jobs in factories that had shut down.
The financial crisis hit a few years into my first job after college. As a young person with a well paying job who was looking to buy a starter house back then, I saw how absurd the affordability issue was, and I watched home prices just keep going up. I got pitched all the zero down, adjustable rate, negative amortization loans there were. I knew it was all a bunch of shit, and prices had to crash. I was able to short home builders and financial stocks through the ETFs SKF and SRS, but I didnt have a whole lot of money to make anything significant. In the end, when the government bailed all the banks out, my positions got crushed and I ended the whole fiasco with no gain or loss, but I did learn a very big life lesson in how to buy and sell stocks
I'm from Zimbabwe. When the events of this movie took place, our economy was already in a death spiral due to bad governance. By '07, our currency was all but useless; supermarkets and grocery stores only had toilet paper and nothing else. However, 2007-08 was the worst and still is the lowest point in the history of the country's economy. I had always wondered why 2007-08 was so especially bad until I watched this movie. Very few countries on Earth were spared the effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Because we were already going through our own economic depression, we barely noticed when the GFC started but eventually we felt it halfway across the world. Hence, seeing how the crisis-affected people in the USA is quite interesting and sad.
It bothers me deeply that not many people understand what happened. It’s not as complicated as it’s made to seem, not at its roots. And you don’t have to understand every corner of it to get the idea of what happened. But understanding what happened gives people a better idea of the world they live in.
@K.C-2049 Matt Taibbi has a great quote about writing his story about it right after it happened. It’s something along the lines of “as a finance story I couldn’t wrap my head around it. When I started to view it as a crime story it started falling into place.”
One of my favorite movies is the one that looks at this from the other side, from the inside of the I-bank that finally realized the crash was inevitable, and what they did on the night their analysts discovered this (and day after) that started the October 2008 sell-offs. It's called "Margin Call", and there are about 5 or 6 actors in that movie that could have legitimately won the Academy Award for their performances, one of the best-acted movies of all-time. It's not Lehman, they were already dead when this happened (they went Chapter 7 back on September 15), this bank actually survived intact because they were the first to dump.
I was in college during this time, while nobody I knew was directly devastated like many people, we all felt the pinch. Probably the biggest catalyst for my radicalization, as prior to that I was closer to a centrist. Ended up marching in Boston as part of Occupy.
I live near a railroad track. I remember there was a steep spike in deaths of pedestrians at the crossings. Going from like 1 every other year to 10 in 2 months.
Was close to turning 30, and it was a time in life then where you expected to start getting a little ahead and established financially based on how everything had been and how we were raised. Then everything crashed. Most of my social group had either started to catch up on student loans from bad degrees they'd been encouraged to get, because if you didn't go to college you'd be a failure according to counselors, and the ones that didn't go to college had enough work experience and skills to have started making good incomes. There was an idea at the time that everyone should have a house, even if you couldn't really afford one. Didn't understand how that would work, but before the crash was an easy way to make money. I was working with a friend to flip houses when the crash happened. That friend is still living in the house we were flipping then. The same thing has been going on with the used car market for almost a decade now, and continues to get worse, but massive interest rate loans and car repos don't get as much attention as homes.
This was such a fun, great way of explaining a complicated subject to people while keeping them entertained. Hard not to take notice when Margot's scene comes on.
The 88th Academy Awards was such a great year for Best Picture nominations. Not one picture didn't deserve recognition in some way. "Spotlight" needs to be on your must-watch list as well. As for The Big Short, it balanced the 2008 crisis with fantastic storytelling, direction, education, comedy, mostly factual history, and great acting. Awesome movie that is far better than the credit it gets IMHO.
This is a great movie, up there with Moneyball for a film about a subject I knew nothing about previously but came away from feeling both informed, amused and infuriated.
The reason he was collecting mugs is because he knew there was a huge chance all those firms would disappear after the crash (most indeed did) so he took a souvenir of the soon to be dead firms. He was collecting trophies of his hunt.
So happy this is finally making the rounds in the reaction community. As an autistic stock trader myself, I fully relate to Michael Burry's anti-social, heavy metal-loving, awkward persona. His speech at the end about this business killing the part of life that is essential is on point, as everything about life is reduced to numbers on a screen. My dream is to one day take all the money I've made staring into the abyss of the market and use it for some humanitarian benefit. Edit: I actually missed the housing crisis entirely because I was fighting in Iraq from 06 to 09, so that whole thing passed us by.
Reading all the stories in these replies. Most disaster movies, the survivors wake up the day after to the sun rising, put everything back together, and hug their families. This one shattered people. It shattered families. It left them shattered. For decades. And the people responsible were rewarded for it. Simone being livid beyond words, what a perfect reaction.
I was a month away from getting married when this happened. I was laid off the week before christmas, and unemployed for the ceremony. That was one of the worst and best times of my life, all rolled into one. I'm a Xennial, and it just seems like my generation keeps getting hit by crisis after crisis every few years. Eat the rich, bring on the guillotines, they have forgotten why they should fear the people.
@@maloxi1472 The rich, as in, those lobbying to ensure crooked people uphold crooked laws? Very much ARE the issue. Don't spend on mental health or prison reform or de-ghettoing or the utility network or healthcare or fairer working conditions, because that all comes at the cost of the richest of the rich not making ALL the profit.. Pretty sure you can trace back anything wrong with the country to someone or a group profiting. There's a reason y'all have so damn many prisoners per capita, because companies make profit on prisoners. Health is somehow a commodity in the US, and as such is also overpriced AF. Rich people caused a lot of the underlying issues by wanting to be richer yet. If you can't tell, then my guy, you haven't been paying attention.
My wife and I were lucky enough to keep our jobs during all of this. Around this time we decided to refinance our home. Our loan officer lived in our neighborhood and at the time tried to talk us out of a conventional loan (15,30 yr) and into an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) which was an even lower interest rate but much riskier longer term. When we said no his response was “come on all of your neighbors are doing it”. Our thought was it seemed too good to be true and our neighbors were mostly idiots. They were bragging to everyone about getting a loan on stated income alone. One of the best decisions we ever made was to stay with the conventional loan. A whole bunch of people in that neighborhood lost their homes to foreclosure, including the loan agent.
To the question posed at the end "Why more?" because, and there have been studies about this, people aren't satisfied by what they have. The kick comes from acquiring money.
The portrayals of the real characters are surprisingly realistic. Christian Bale met the real Michael Bury and even borrowed oms of his clothes and wore them.
I was around 9 years old when the financial crisis hit, i lived in a nice home with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms a nice kitchen with a marble countertop and a big backyard and garage. Eventually we lost the house, my parents got divorced and ive been living apartment to apartment ever since at the age of 24
I was a mortgage processor in 2000-2003 and then worked for some small mortgage companies until 2005. It was not a secret, everyone knew what was going on and that it would end badly. We just did not know when or how it would end.
This is incredibly light humoured look at the situation, but i recommend watching another movie about it which is purely dramatic and it’s brilliant, called Margin Call. It’s phenomenal.
I graduated from college in 2008 with a degree in Computer Engineering. During this collapse the amount of jobs in my field that were outsourced was staggeringly high. I was going to job fairs at 21 years old competing for entry level positions that remained against 40 year old people. I ended up just finding a local place where friends worked and did data entry to make a living. I ended up staying with that company for 14 years until they laid me off. I now work for a similar company that I'm enjoying, but can't help think that my entire career trajectory is due to this event, for better or for worse. I now work in ETL/ Data Analytics/ Dashboard and Reporting, I wonder where I would be if none of the events of this movie happened. I also realize how lucky I am that I still ended up where I am compared to a lot of others.
12:04 That happened to my wife and I. We were renting a house and our landlord lost the house because they got behind on payments. Luckily, at least for us, the trustee who bought the house wasn't interested in trying to sell at that time (since the market was still so bad) and they wanted to continue renting to us. But obviously a lot of people weren't that lucky.
I was in my early twenties when this all went down. When people ask why I don't own a home or have kids or investments, I point to this film. Watching my family and my friend's families go through this - losing their jobs, losing their homes, even a few suicides for good measure, etc. - put me off the rat race and trying to be middle class. Nowadays, I don't have much but I am secure and what I do have is mine.
I was the same way. Did not buy a house in 2005-2006 and my friends and family were making fun of me for not getting in the market. I couldn't understand why the home prices were increasing when there were no new jobs, no outside investment and people buying homes who couldn't afford it were allowed to buy. It did not sense to me but I was not astute to figure it out. I just stuck to my conservative plan to save money. After 2008 all those friends and family that made fun of me lost their homes, savings, and some lost their jobs as realtors (so they can flip homes).
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Oh, stop trying to win the pity olympics. Your generation caused the recession of '08. Young, dumb professionals trying too hard to be middle class and passing the buck onto my generation when it went all went tits up.
Too Big To Fail is another good film about the collapse, though its timeline is after everything was hitting the fan and the banks were trying to hide it (starts in early 2008). William Hurt plays Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and there's a stacked cast.
This is one of those movies that gets under my skin. The greed of those bankers, who didn't care is something out of this world. I try not to wish ill will to anybody but I have no sympathy for any of those politicians, lobbyists or bankers who knew what was gonna happen and did nothing. Sorry for the rant. This movie is something else.😁
You guys should check out Margin Call. It's a fictional but realistic look at a similar financial collapse with an all-star cast that is also infuriating but mesmerizing.
I’ve been waiting for you guys to do this one, especially given George’s love of data and competent people being competent! One of my favorites, though I can only watch it every so often because it’s so upsetting.
Of course they're doing it again, when you control enough capital you make money from the highs and the lows. All those properties that people lost didn't disappear they were repossessed then sold again for profit. Business were hoovered up for pennies on the dollar and added to portfolios or sold off. My parents owned a small hotel, the bank screwed them over withdrawing an agreed loan during the crisis forcing them to sell. The occupy wall street movement was a step in the right direction but didn't go far enough.
I worked as a customer service trainer at a mortgage servicing company a few years ago. When I could, I always made my classes watch this movie because it does a really good job of explaining a lot of the background and why some of the laws now exist that mortgage companies need to be aware of. Great movie.
From one with an Economics and hedge fund background ...the kindest thing I can say about this film, which is enjoyable, regarding its accuracy? This movie incorrectly repeats the debunked causes of the Financial Crash, promoted by Leftists. People ignorant of the financial system, or those unfamiliar with the basic hard science of Economics. The real causes of the crash: 1 - The Federal Reserve - mispricing the cost of money 2 - The Federal government - The Community Reinvestment Act. Which requires banks to loan to non-credit worthy people, if they're not White or Asian. 3 - The rating agencies rubber stamping complex derivative products, containing a range of product qualities ...as uniformly, high grade.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
This crash detroyed our family. We lost our retail shop, we lost our home of 20 years, and we lost our construction company. We still havent recovered fully. Mom became suicidal and dad had to come out of retirement and work a fedex delivery job. I was stuck working odd jobs for years. A terrible time that destroyed everyone.
People today tend to just forget that not that long ago millions of ppls lives were wrecked, some irrevocably, by a series of faraway investment banking decisions and the awful political response to it. Most of the people who actually fucked everything up walked away, the politicians walked away pretending they saved the world, and the economic system was permanently altered for the worse via a massive upwards transfer of wealth.
I also lost my home of ten years because of Countrywide. You have my condolences it really sucks rebuilding from scratch.
@anthonyscully2998 I was in construction at the time of the crash all the jobs were gone pretty much over night.
Sorry but how did they manage to lose a home if they owned not only a retail shop but also a construction company? Assuming both had employees?
@@EdriczZ_ yes. All were lost in the same month. The family home went into foreclosure and we couldn't get it back. Ended up moving to 4 different places in a year before settling in the current home. I didn't have a grasp on the world ongoing because I was in my late teens enjoying life and then BOOM! No home, no job.
Definitely also worth watching Margin Call which tells the story from the perspective of an investment bank at the start of the financial crisis. Incredible cast with Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Zach Quinto, Demi Moore and others. Put together with The Big Short it really helps understand the whole 2008 crisis.
How about "Too Big To Fail"
Yeah I really hope Margin Call comes too.
It's a decent movie but I feel The Big Short is much more entertaining and cuts to the point. The banks got greedy. They need to create laws and rules and the banks just need to be able to play in that space, but slowly they're pulling back those regulations and we saw it happen with that one bank a year or so ago...
I was working at Wells Fargo Institutional Trust Services at the time. I remember walking into work that morning and being told to direct all calls to corporate legal. Watching Bear Sterns fall in real time was surreal. Next was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac deals and then Lehman Brothers going bankrupt. It was wild. We kept wondering if we would be next. I was so stressed out by the end of the year that I got out of the financial industry.
@@seekfirst817 excellent shout on Too Big To Fail. I ad come here to say that. Excellent cast and very well done.
Mark Baum is based off Steve Eisman, whose personal life tragedy was changed for the movie. Instead of his brother commiting suicide, his baby son died after his nanny rolled on top of him during sleep.
In the scene where Burry asks for the banks cups, apparently he was thinking the Banks would collapse so he thought they would be a cool souvenir/keepsake to have.
In an alternate universe, bank cups would soon become the new trade commodity, he was just getting ahead.
You can say Burry was mugging them...
@@breaker6683 Remember, Burry is now shorting water.
The fun thing about the mugs - he's not taking free mugs.... he's collecting trophies. He knows once the defaults happen, the mugs will probably be all that's left.
He was mugging the companies
Lmaoo literally mugging them for billions
I wanted to see them all in an office cabinet. Especially in his moment of doubt, and him just seething in rage at the corruption. When he left at the end, he should have put them all in a box and walked out.
they're like skulls of his slain enemies, pretty hardcore
So incredibly well edited, George. Best reaction on UA-cam for this film now.
The 4th wall breaking is used in order to constantly pull the viewer out of just passively watching a movie and serves as a continual reminder that this really did happen and still needs to be addressed.
So why was Margot Robbie in a bubble bath? Was that intentionally supposed to distract us from what she was saying?
@@Rocket1377when did I say “distract?” I said it’s used to pull the viewer to pay attention.
@@Rocket1377 Yeah, imagine if it were some economics professor or media pundit. People don't want to pay attention to that.
@@Rocket1377 Water is the warning in this film.
@@Fungo4 This is almost the main joke of the scene really. It's info EVERYONE should know but normally find too boring.
I thougnt the scene with Mia Kunis gambling and people taking on the sidebets was another way they used that technique to teach a boring subjedcg.
One of my favorite examples of great writing happens in this movie: it explains to you how big a $15 billion exposure is not by weighing the script down with exposition, but just have Mark frame the question by asking '3? don't tell it's more than 4.' Just like that, you understand it's huge.
It was great acting by Steve Carrell how he acted annoyed when Kathy said she couldn't share that info. It portrays "screw all the guidelines and formalities, this is Armageddon, I caught you guys in a lie, and you need to tell me right now"
Steve Carell showed range in his acting, really liked his performance.
What? I can't see any difference between his role in this and his playing Brick in Anchorman...
(Just kidding!)
@@pistonburner6448 it's just Michel playing his finance guy character 😂
The MVP for me was Christian Bale, who really nailed some of the mannerisms of someone on the autism spectrum (which Michael Burry (the guy Bale is playing) has been diagnosed with). Having been diagnosed myself, his performance hit especially hard for me. I'm so glad he got nominated from this cast.
This isnt a movie about the economy. It's a horror movie. One of the scariest ever made.
and we learnt nothing lmao
I think of it as a disaster movie. It checks the boxes of one.
He doesnt mean its literally a film belonging to the horror genre he's been hyperbolic and I agree it's a disaster film @jblitzen
Dunno, Idiocracy is pretty scary as well ❤
Very true.
Now that you've seen The Big Short, you should definitely watch Margin Call as a companion film to this one - it's a look at the other side of the table, at what happened in that big empty bank office one day prior when everyone still had their jobs. An acting powerhouse, just incredible performances scene after scene after scene.
Great movie, surprisingly not a very popular movie.
OMG. I just wrote a similar comment. Fantastic movie. Quite interesting perspective. And Jeremy Irons just kills it.
Margin call is really top class movie
The incredible irony of the American Securitization Forum annual meeting that happens in Las Vegas always was the icing on the cake. This movie radicalized me.
I'm sad it's so lacking in reactions compared to Wolf of Wall Street, but I get it.
Yup. Totally made me a Bernie and Elizabeth Warren fan for sure.
Curious. This happen because of radical liberal banking policy. The radicals attempted social equity through sub-prime lending. While attempting to prop up the economy with bad loans.
The failure was moving away from conservative lending policies.
@@artboymoy boring for liberal Democrats is not radical at all.
@@artboymoy Good place to start but keep looking left. You might find some more, shall we say, effective political figures to appreciate.
I'm so glad you guys watched this.
It's a scary movie and people unfortunately need to be aware that the banks are NOT on your side.
I suggest y'all try "Margin Call" in the future.
Margin Call is propaganda that attempts to humanize financial terrorists.
Is Margin Call similar in feel to The Big Short?
Margin Call is an EXCELLENT movie that shows you more perspective from the mortgagae fund lenders.
Margin Call is about a low level accountant who spots what's about to happen, tells his bosses, who arrive in their helicopters for an emergency board meeting, and work 24/7 shifting all the bonds off their books and onto any and all clients gullible enough to believe their lies. They bend and stretch the law to breaking point to make sure by the time the market opens and the world ends, their books are clean.
It's a sickening watch, made worse by having Kevin Spacey in it, but an amazing piece of writing.
margin call is great.. very different tone from big short though. It wasn't as light-hearted.. but maybe more compelling
Yeah, that was a dark period. My wife and I had a small business. We had 5 full time employees. We lost all of our clients but one. At one point in '08 an employee came to me and complained that we hadn't given her a raise in a year. I couldn't say anything to her at the time, but we only had about $250 left in our bank acct. We had to pay rent, pay bills etc. We blew through our savings almost immediately because we had virtually no revenue. But we always paid our employees. We never let anyone go. It was hard having to bite my tongue when this employee was ripping into me. I understood her need, but I admit it was hard to look her in the eye from then on. Early in Obama's presidency, he passed legislation that made getting a loan from the SBA almost automatic. We were afforded the loan, and were saved from bankruptcy in the short term. But the economic collapse was a gut punch and left psychological scars. First it was 9/11, then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the economic collapse in 07/08. Excuse my language, but what a fucked up first decade of the millennium. The second decade hasn't improved any. I admit that it has all made me more guarded, more pessimistic and more distrusting of people and the institutions they create to manage the collective. I love this movie but it does bring back the cold sweats whenever I see parts of it.
Thank you for sharing this-you are so right about how terrible things have been for the American people.
@@BarryHart-xo1oy It’s been hard, but nowhere near what much of the rest of the world has had to endure, and unfortunately they’ve had to endure it because of us. I remain cautiously optimistic that people will one day treat each other more empathetically, and offer a helping hand rather than a fist.
That's one of the most pervasive things about the 2008 crisis. Financial stress turned into familial stress and people became more hostile to each other. A sharp contrast to the financial euphoria and comfort of the early 2000's. Even NOW in 2024 money feels more scarce and less valuable than say in 2004.
The crash really redpilled me against the pipe dream of America being the greatest country. It became a laughable and insulting comic-book fairytale to me by 2013. By 2021 with Covid corruption and fuckery, half of me was just hoping everything would collapse so people would be mad enough to do something about it.
Felix Biederman said it best in Fighting in the Age of Loneliness when 2008 came up, that a lot of people checked out afterward because the pain of seeing a system collapse never leaves you.
America never really recovered from 2008, most of all psychologically.
I'M SO GLAD YOU GUYS WATCHED THIS! I'm that one person on Patreon that kept suggesting it. :D It's such a unique blend of education and comedy, and with such an incredible ensemble cast. And yeah...it's also depressing and frustrating.
I agree with other people here; Margin Call would be an EXCELLENT companion piece for this.
To answer George's question at the beginning: the entire local branch of the company I worked for dissolved and I was unemployed for 1.75 years before crawling back to contract game testing because I couldn't get anything else. I was living with my parents again for a few years. I felt like I was starting over adulthood from scratch. The silver lining was that I eventually got a foot in the door for the career I now have, but it was really hard for several years.
Margin Call is a great companion movie to this one if you haven't seen it. Absolute powerhouse of a film.
'Inside Job' (2010) is a fantastic documentary, narrated by Matt Damon, that goes into detail about the whole mess.
The director of that documentary made an earlier one on the US-Iraq war called 'No End In Sight', not related but also worth a watch. The incompetence of the US adminstration during that war was breath-taking, like 'holy shit' level incompetence.
@@FutureKnutWell, the world enters awesome-level incompetence with an 'Honest D' win this year.
I'm not a big Ryan Gosling fan, but I love his line reading of "I'M JACKED TO THE TITS!"
This is easily one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time. The humor, the teaching, the reality & the moral...you wouldn't expect it. "Spotlight" is a similar movie I'd recommend
Yeah spotlight more serious tone but great movies. You seen dark waters with mark ruffalo? Pretty good movie also. Same sort of cover up idea
@stirling84 haven't seen Dark Waters, but it's on my list now. Good looking out :)
You missed the film's prophecy and its advice. It's mentioned but once ... but it's in many scenes.
I‘m from Germany and my Stepfather and my mother both lost their jobs and we lost our house. Fortunately we recovered after 4-5 years of true hardship, it was an awful time!
Yes, Europe actually took much longer for their economies to recover after this mostly US housing market crash. And Germany was probably one of the first if not the first. It's tougher when government is too much in the economy already because then they have fewer ways to counter a slow down in consumerism. China is really going to rocked when their housing market collapses. 1990s Japan all over again but effecting billions of people. And in many ways, Japan's economy has still never recovered. It's why I believe China will not surpass the US, or if they do, it will be both brief and a mix of make believe governmental numbers. In the US, real estate counts for 15%-20% of the GDP. In China, it is 30%. That is almost double. So a significant fall there will wipe out tens of millions of families' net worths at a minimum.
I was in Vegas right after it. I saw some houses going for under 100k. Our cab driver was a realtor. There were Wall Street protests around the U.S. that unfortunately changed nothing. Canada was doing fine financially and got dragged into the recession like many other countries around the world.
When the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.
Canadian financial regulations were far stricter so we didn't feel the blow as hard as others, but it still hurt. We just refused as a nation to be bullied into loosening our financial system.
Occupy Wall Street unfortunately was sabotaged, because it was the first time in our lifetime that Americans started targeting the entities truly responsible for corruption, mass exploitation and profiteering. The banks literally coordinated with the FBI who labeled OWS a terrorist organization. It was our peaceful version of a medieval peasant revolt and we were crushed by the tyrants.
Our founding fathers would be sick to death if they could have witnessed that.
I was 22, and had just started my trucking company. Diesel was like 5 bucks a gallon. My older brother and his family's house was foreclosed on by Country Wide even though they had offers for a short sale, Country wide wouldn't accept and foreclosed. Other than that, most of my family was fine, and my brother and his family bounced back and are doing fantastic now...If you've ever watched a movie and then watched it again and picked up on things you missed the first time, the Big Short is one of those movies. Even though they really tried to keep it simple and explain everything, it's still a movie you almost have to watch again to catch it all and understand it all. I also think it's an extremely important movie for people to see and more importantly understand.
That question ..I immediately got flashbacks to my dad and I experiencing homelessness together, Sleeping in his car. Eating dinner from the vending machine at his job, showering at family’s houses. Eating expired bread we found when our cousin took us in and ripping the mold off. My dad being so proud, Where our cousin would make dinner and offer us to come up and he’d say no. And we’d eat cafeteria sandwiches he got from work
25:58 -- "i wonder if the actual people are in this movie playing other roles"
Michael Burry cameos as a Scion employee
I didn't personally notice it. My family was poor. We did own our land and house but it wasn't much. I just kept working delivering and recovering rent to own furniture. I finally quit that horrible business and on a whim joined the navy. That is when I saw the effects. So many people had joined the military that it started to push against the limits of how many recruits they could handle. By the time I was done with all my basic and advanced training there were people waiting 6 months or more just to get in an electronics class. This is bad because the Navy is now paying all these new people to sit around and sweep floors until they can be trained. It reminds me of my grandpa not really knowing the Great Depression was going on since they were poor as you could get. Just share croppers growing cotton and tobacco in Georgia. The middle class took the biggest hit from what I've seen.
I was working my first post-college job when 2008 struck, and I was among the first wave of layoffs. Thankfully I had some family support, so I didn't end up homeless, but it was rough. Still is. Beginning of the end, from where I've been sitting.
Writing this before watching:
In 2008 I was 17 and in school. And in Germany. The way it affected me personally was just that I saw stuff about it on the news and learned about it in Social and Economics class. Can't say that much of it stuck. I just remember that it started with a US real estate bubble bursting and granting loans to people who never should've got one.
My family wasn't really affected and neither was my extented family. But I have to add there that my entire extended family is upper middle class, as were my friends' families. I don't think any of them were really badly affected.
Also (I think) Germany made it through the crisis pretty well, a lot of countries were much worse off.
So yeah, going into this one almost as blind as Simone, let's see if I remember school correctly.
Edit after watching: I guess I remembered the gist of it. We never went into all the details, probably because we didn't know about it at the time. All those terrible consequences....we just didn't feel them in my socio-economic bubble in 2008 Germany. Sure we learned that something bad was going on with the world-wide economy but to me it was never close enough to encourage more than a general "Fuck those bankers" attitude.
The sad part of this movie is that the banks are willing to do this all over again just using different terminology.
There's another movie about the crash called "margin call", a compelling watch about how the system makes sure it wins even when it loses.
My favorite quote from the movie: "Two plus two equals... FISH!"
My parents moved from Colorado to Las Vegas because my stepfather is a Union electrician; the lists in Colorado were so backed up that he wouldn't have gotten a job here for years, and he was smart enough to keep himself on the lists in multiple states just in case, so he got to work on the one project in Vegas that didn't get canceled, the Aria. I moved in with them after dropping out of college, the strip was dead and empty; there were the skeletons of a half dozen uncompleted hotels throughout, old downtown was gross and unclean, and every fenced neighborhood was 70% empty. My uncles meanwhile had taken the plunge a few years before and opened their own construction company after two decades of working for other people, they went under and got into a fight so big that until pretty much five years ago when the eldest retired they still didn't talk to each other.
"Margin Call" and "Too Big To Fail" round out the 2008 financial crisis trilogy. Also "99 Homes" and "Inside Job" are a good watch to get an expanded view.
Love this movie! I was involved in commercial real estate during this time and a restaurateur. 6 weeks before the s#*t hit the rotary device, I was able to sell my restaurant. Thank God! As a commercial realtor and business broker, I had several deals fall through because banks and other lenders had started to hold back or negate previously approved loans to potential buyers and those who wanted to lease.
Keep up the great reactions!
This movie and "Margin Call" goes excellent with each other
This is simply one of my favorite movies. I loved how you two appreciated the well executed balance of difficult information with comedy. Truly makes the movie palletable and allows me to recommend it to anyone.
I feel like this movie has just the right amount of lighthearted content to address such a touchy and complicated subject.
Check out the movie Margin Call, it's about the same 2008 crash but from a banks perspective. Great film and has some excellent performances from Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons.
Thank you so much for doing this!
I might be a bit of an outlier because I'm an economist and was in a major banking centre of the world learning finance industry security, but this is like p0rn to me. I could watch this every day. I don't know how many times I've watched this movie.
For sure it's high praise when industry insiders love the movie about their industry instead of the usual which happens to other movies: insiders hating so many things ridiculously wrong in the movie. They got things right in this one, it was smart not to go in too deep into details, they sort of had different people _represent_ different institutions and characters.
I literally know people exactly like almost every one of the characters in the movie...well, a few I've only known of from afar. And a few I've luckily not bumped into in those exact roles. I'm fortunate to not have mingled with insurance brokers.
I rarely cry in movies but by the time they get to moving on from the insurance brokers I have tears in my eyes. (Not happy tears) (BTW the insurance brokers are doing wrong but they're not the worst people as they're simple salesmen just like most scammer-salesmen in all industries. They're the little guys you can't really blame...that much. The big guys want them to do exactly what they're doing, they set up the game for the little brokers exactly how they wanted them to act. Brokers do what they're allowed to do.)
This film changed how I want to be as a writer. Adam McKay wrote and directed this at the time he was known for comedies and to see The Other Guys tackle real financial issues in the film but in a comedic way, I felt, was his way of getting his feet wet to dive into this subject matter. Ever since this film, his work has been on a more dramatic end. It just goes to show you can change horses midstream.
About the semiotics ... what can you note about Burry at the beginning of the film--compared to the section that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what happened?
The scene where Mark Baum shares about his brother gets me every time. As someone who works a lot and who has a brother in an emotionally draining job, I want to learn from Mark's mistakes (even though I think the story is modified from the book).
I was very young at the time, almost a teenager, so I personally didn't understand the effects, but felt them. My stepdad's mood changed. Luckily, he bought the house a few years before this. He was into these home projects, gardening, the like. In 2008, it just stopped. He was working longer hours, yet getting less clients. My mom was working odd hours at this point. Tensions were high and eventually a divorce (there were other personal reasons of course). My best friend in the neighborhood moved out of city, yet his parents owned a business close by. I went to the most underfunded school in the area. A lot of my friends were just gone. It was so quiet.
Based on your appreciation of the writing in this and Moneyball, I highly recommend you watch Margin Call next. OutSTANDing cast and an impeccable screenplay.
There's also Too Big to Fail if you want the government perspective.
I have been dying for you guys to react to this movie for ages so when I saw the thumbnail I was very excited. This is a great reaction to an amazing and horrific movie. Thank you.
The screenwriters for some reason changed Steve Eisman's name to "Mark Baum" for Steve Carrell's character here. And as hard as it may be to fathom, they thought that if they didn't change the personal tragedy that he and his wife endured, it would derail the movie -- it's that horrific.
Yes, Margin Call is also a good movie about the 2007 housing crash. In 2007 I was working at a large insurance company that had a lot of mortgage backed securities on their books. I left just before the mortgage crisis and that company took a huge hit when those bonds failed. Most of the people I worked with were gone in a year and the company itself downsized drastically. I remember how confident everyone who traded securities were about how secure their jobs were , bragging about the big houses they had and the expensive cars they drove. I left because the corporate culture there was really turning toxic and I just had had enough. But even so a lot of my work friends suffered in the collapse and had to move to find a new job or lost their houses.
I remember a podcaster described The Big Short in the perfect way. Basically “have you ever been so mad at someone that you can’t even argue with them anymore, so you just repeat what they say in a stupid voice? That’s what The Big Short feels like to me”
Great movie!!! 👍😎👍 Ya'll should follow it up with "Margin Call".
Ensemble cast dealing with the same subject but very zoomed in to a single firm.
That last "You're Welcome." Is such a great "F U!" 😊
Why would they learn? They were bailed out by the government and felt none of the pain.
I was "lucky" during the 2008 collapse. I was young-ish (29), didn't own a home or anything, and had a very unimportant IT job with one of the state governments here in the U.S. The job didn't pay a lot, but it was stable, and had good benefits. I may have left that job for greener pastures, but for a couple of years there...there were no greener pastures. I have a lot of friends who really struggled during that time, stringing together contract gigs for a few months at a time (at most), with no real security. And they were the lucky ones, because even though it wasn't easy, they could still keep a roof over their head.
I feel your pain there. I was almost in the exact same position. And pretty much just got stuck in a dead-end but still stable position for many years. Stalled probably the best time for career growth to just keeping your head down for 5 years. But better stuck than struggling.
A great follow up to this would be "Margin Call" which shows in closer detail what companies actually did to trigger the collapse. Great Writing and a star cast.
when he takes the mugs, he is literally mugging them. always loved that analogy in the movie.
I just turned 6 around the time the financial crisis started in 2007, I vaguely remember anything concrete, but I do remember I started getting hand me downs from the neighbor’s kid from 2008-2012ish, we started buying a lot more food in bulk and spreading it out over long periods of time, like multiple 50lb bags of rice in a closet. A bunch of our teachers got laid off due to budget cuts. It was a sad time
I joined the military in 2008. The amount of people who came in shortly after due to losing their houses and jobs was nuts. Right around the time of the surge in Afghanistan.
I remember driving to work Sept 2008 and the news came on the radio to announce Lehman Brothers had folded. I knew at that very moment that the world had changed and we were in for a rough time.
Marissa Tormei's facial expressions, when she realises Marc Baum has switched to talking about his brother is sooo heartbreaking. 21:40
"Margin Call" is the same story but different. Wonderful acting. Really good movie.
I'm from Greece, so just like Brad Pitt says in the movie, we were done but our governments still pretend we're not.
We're still living it. Councils have been underfunded for 16 years are now starting to run out of money and going bankrupt. It used to be called austerity, but that makes it sound like it should only be temporary, except so far it's lasted 16 years and seems to be getting worse not better. So far it's affected at last 1 generation, maybe more to come. bummer.. now here's Carol with the weather.
Wall Street film is also good btw :)
Lol I thought you wrote councils have been underfucked.
I watched this unfold in slow motion as I'm plugged in to the news. I had to leave university, move home, and finally got a job at Walmart after being unemployed for two years. I was lucky, and got in a new store that had just been expanded, and where I ended up was the only county in the entirety of Ontario (and the whole of Canada east of Alberta) that actually had businesses hiring. Most of my coworkers had lost their 20-30 year jobs in factories that had shut down.
The financial crisis hit a few years into my first job after college. As a young person with a well paying job who was looking to buy a starter house back then, I saw how absurd the affordability issue was, and I watched home prices just keep going up. I got pitched all the zero down, adjustable rate, negative amortization loans there were. I knew it was all a bunch of shit, and prices had to crash. I was able to short home builders and financial stocks through the ETFs SKF and SRS, but I didnt have a whole lot of money to make anything significant. In the end, when the government bailed all the banks out, my positions got crushed and I ended the whole fiasco with no gain or loss, but I did learn a very big life lesson in how to buy and sell stocks
I'm from Zimbabwe. When the events of this movie took place, our economy was already in a death spiral due to bad governance. By '07, our currency was all but useless; supermarkets and grocery stores only had toilet paper and nothing else. However, 2007-08 was the worst and still is the lowest point in the history of the country's economy. I had always wondered why 2007-08 was so especially bad until I watched this movie. Very few countries on Earth were spared the effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Because we were already going through our own economic depression, we barely noticed when the GFC started but eventually we felt it halfway across the world. Hence, seeing how the crisis-affected people in the USA is quite interesting and sad.
It bothers me deeply that not many people understand what happened. It’s not as complicated as it’s made to seem, not at its roots. And you don’t have to understand every corner of it to get the idea of what happened. But understanding what happened gives people a better idea of the world they live in.
Very true.
@K.C-2049 Matt Taibbi has a great quote about writing his story about it right after it happened. It’s something along the lines of “as a finance story I couldn’t wrap my head around it. When I started to view it as a crime story it started falling into place.”
@K.C-2049”Normal People” enables this to happen when they vote for ever-more government-deficit spending.
One of my favorite movies is the one that looks at this from the other side, from the inside of the I-bank that finally realized the crash was inevitable, and what they did on the night their analysts discovered this (and day after) that started the October 2008 sell-offs. It's called "Margin Call", and there are about 5 or 6 actors in that movie that could have legitimately won the Academy Award for their performances, one of the best-acted movies of all-time. It's not Lehman, they were already dead when this happened (they went Chapter 7 back on September 15), this bank actually survived intact because they were the first to dump.
I was in college during this time, while nobody I knew was directly devastated like many people, we all felt the pinch. Probably the biggest catalyst for my radicalization, as prior to that I was closer to a centrist. Ended up marching in Boston as part of Occupy.
I live near a railroad track. I remember there was a steep spike in deaths of pedestrians at the crossings. Going from like 1 every other year to 10 in 2 months.
Was close to turning 30, and it was a time in life then where you expected to start getting a little ahead and established financially based on how everything had been and how we were raised. Then everything crashed.
Most of my social group had either started to catch up on student loans from bad degrees they'd been encouraged to get, because if you didn't go to college you'd be a failure according to counselors, and the ones that didn't go to college had enough work experience and skills to have started making good incomes.
There was an idea at the time that everyone should have a house, even if you couldn't really afford one. Didn't understand how that would work, but before the crash was an easy way to make money. I was working with a friend to flip houses when the crash happened. That friend is still living in the house we were flipping then.
The same thing has been going on with the used car market for almost a decade now, and continues to get worse, but massive interest rate loans and car repos don't get as much attention as homes.
I worked on this film. We filmed in New Orleans. It's a great film with a wonderful cast!
This was such a fun, great way of explaining a complicated subject to people while keeping them entertained. Hard not to take notice when Margot's scene comes on.
The 88th Academy Awards was such a great year for Best Picture nominations. Not one picture didn't deserve recognition in some way. "Spotlight" needs to be on your must-watch list as well.
As for The Big Short, it balanced the 2008 crisis with fantastic storytelling, direction, education, comedy, mostly factual history, and great acting. Awesome movie that is far better than the credit it gets IMHO.
This is a great movie, up there with Moneyball for a film about a subject I knew nothing about previously but came away from feeling both informed, amused and infuriated.
both films adapted from books, written by the same author (Michael Lewis)
The reason he was collecting mugs is because he knew there was a huge chance all those firms would disappear after the crash (most indeed did) so he took a souvenir of the soon to be dead firms. He was collecting trophies of his hunt.
It's a metaphor for the prophecy of the film.
So happy this is finally making the rounds in the reaction community. As an autistic stock trader myself, I fully relate to Michael Burry's anti-social, heavy metal-loving, awkward persona. His speech at the end about this business killing the part of life that is essential is on point, as everything about life is reduced to numbers on a screen. My dream is to one day take all the money I've made staring into the abyss of the market and use it for some humanitarian benefit.
Edit: I actually missed the housing crisis entirely because I was fighting in Iraq from 06 to 09, so that whole thing passed us by.
Thanks!
thank you!! ☺️
Along with "Too Big to Fail", this is one of my favorite realistic modern horror films. All the monsters win.
Reading all the stories in these replies. Most disaster movies, the survivors wake up the day after to the sun rising, put everything back together, and hug their families.
This one shattered people. It shattered families. It left them shattered. For decades. And the people responsible were rewarded for it.
Simone being livid beyond words, what a perfect reaction.
I was a month away from getting married when this happened. I was laid off the week before christmas, and unemployed for the ceremony. That was one of the worst and best times of my life, all rolled into one. I'm a Xennial, and it just seems like my generation keeps getting hit by crisis after crisis every few years. Eat the rich, bring on the guillotines, they have forgotten why they should fear the people.
If you truly believe that "the rich" are the issue, then you haven't been paying attention
@@maloxi1472 The rich, as in, those lobbying to ensure crooked people uphold crooked laws? Very much ARE the issue. Don't spend on mental health or prison reform or de-ghettoing or the utility network or healthcare or fairer working conditions, because that all comes at the cost of the richest of the rich not making ALL the profit.. Pretty sure you can trace back anything wrong with the country to someone or a group profiting. There's a reason y'all have so damn many prisoners per capita, because companies make profit on prisoners. Health is somehow a commodity in the US, and as such is also overpriced AF. Rich people caused a lot of the underlying issues by wanting to be richer yet.
If you can't tell, then my guy, you haven't been paying attention.
@@maloxi1472 Seems like nobody agrees with you moron, enjoy licking those boots.
I’ve been looking forward to this! I think George is going to enjoy the numbers!
My wife and I were lucky enough to keep our jobs during all of this. Around this time we decided to refinance our home. Our loan officer lived in our neighborhood and at the time tried to talk us out of a conventional loan (15,30 yr) and into an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) which was an even lower interest rate but much riskier longer term. When we said no his response was “come on all of your neighbors are doing it”. Our thought was it seemed too good to be true and our neighbors were mostly idiots. They were bragging to everyone about getting a loan on stated income alone. One of the best decisions we ever made was to stay with the conventional loan. A whole bunch of people in that neighborhood lost their homes to foreclosure, including the loan agent.
To the question posed at the end "Why more?" because, and there have been studies about this, people aren't satisfied by what they have. The kick comes from acquiring money.
The portrayals of the real characters are surprisingly realistic. Christian Bale met the real Michael Bury and even borrowed oms of his clothes and wore them.
I was around 9 years old when the financial crisis hit, i lived in a nice home with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms a nice kitchen with a marble countertop and a big backyard and garage.
Eventually we lost the house, my parents got divorced and ive been living apartment to apartment ever since at the age of 24
I was a mortgage processor in 2000-2003 and then worked for some small mortgage companies until 2005. It was not a secret, everyone knew what was going on and that it would end badly. We just did not know when or how it would end.
This is incredibly light humoured look at the situation, but i recommend watching another movie about it which is purely dramatic and it’s brilliant, called Margin Call. It’s phenomenal.
I graduated from college in 2008 with a degree in Computer Engineering. During this collapse the amount of jobs in my field that were outsourced was staggeringly high. I was going to job fairs at 21 years old competing for entry level positions that remained against 40 year old people. I ended up just finding a local place where friends worked and did data entry to make a living. I ended up staying with that company for 14 years until they laid me off. I now work for a similar company that I'm enjoying, but can't help think that my entire career trajectory is due to this event, for better or for worse. I now work in ETL/ Data Analytics/ Dashboard and Reporting, I wonder where I would be if none of the events of this movie happened. I also realize how lucky I am that I still ended up where I am compared to a lot of others.
I was lucky in 2008. My job is essentially recession proof.
This movie is absolutely hilarious. And pretty scary
Nothing is economy-proof.
12:04 That happened to my wife and I. We were renting a house and our landlord lost the house because they got behind on payments. Luckily, at least for us, the trustee who bought the house wasn't interested in trying to sell at that time (since the market was still so bad) and they wanted to continue renting to us. But obviously a lot of people weren't that lucky.
I was in my early twenties when this all went down. When people ask why I don't own a home or have kids or investments, I point to this film. Watching my family and my friend's families go through this - losing their jobs, losing their homes, even a few suicides for good measure, etc. - put me off the rat race and trying to be middle class. Nowadays, I don't have much but I am secure and what I do have is mine.
I was the same way. Did not buy a house in 2005-2006 and my friends and family were making fun of me for not getting in the market. I couldn't understand why the home prices were increasing when there were no new jobs, no outside investment and people buying homes who couldn't afford it were allowed to buy. It did not sense to me but I was not astute to figure it out. I just stuck to my conservative plan to save money. After 2008 all those friends and family that made fun of me lost their homes, savings, and some lost their jobs as realtors (so they can flip homes).
TWO recessions hit Gen X. Never had a chance.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver Oh, stop trying to win the pity olympics. Your generation caused the recession of '08. Young, dumb professionals trying too hard to be middle class and passing the buck onto my generation when it went all went tits up.
@@RideAcrossTheRiver and Gen X banker bros turned around and screwed over my generation...
@@John-ir4idNope, boomers did that to you. Gen X never got that far.
Too Big To Fail is another good film about the collapse, though its timeline is after everything was hitting the fan and the banks were trying to hide it (starts in early 2008). William Hurt plays Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and there's a stacked cast.
This is one of those movies that gets under my skin. The greed of those bankers, who didn't care is something out of this world. I try not to wish ill will to anybody but I have no sympathy for any of those politicians, lobbyists or bankers who knew what was gonna happen and did nothing. Sorry for the rant. This movie is something else.😁
The opposite happened in Canada. The far-right government seized the opportunity to keep most of the population out of the housing market.
So glad good reactors are watching this
You guys should check out Margin Call. It's a fictional but realistic look at a similar financial collapse with an all-star cast that is also infuriating but mesmerizing.
One of the best movies of the last 20 years for me - perfect casting and rhythm to the dialogue.
The craziest part of it all is that my family lost their savings because of this and then we, the taxpayers, then bailed out the banks 🙃
I was out of work for 4 years. They were very hard times.
Watching Margin Call after this would be a great idea, another perspective on the situation
definitely
You should really watch "Margin Call" now - it's a snippet of one night at one of the banks when the crash happened - amazing cast!
12:30 oh Tracy Letts was the Ford guy in Ford v Ferrari. He’s like a good supporting actor like Chris Cooper.
Brilliant movie, changes nothing. The sound of history repeating.
I’ve been waiting for you guys to do this one, especially given George’s love of data and competent people being competent! One of my favorites, though I can only watch it every so often because it’s so upsetting.
Of course they're doing it again, when you control enough capital you make money from the highs and the lows. All those properties that people lost didn't disappear they were repossessed then sold again for profit. Business were hoovered up for pennies on the dollar and added to portfolios or sold off. My parents owned a small hotel, the bank screwed them over withdrawing an agreed loan during the crisis forcing them to sell. The occupy wall street movement was a step in the right direction but didn't go far enough.
I worked as a customer service trainer at a mortgage servicing company a few years ago. When I could, I always made my classes watch this movie because it does a really good job of explaining a lot of the background and why some of the laws now exist that mortgage companies need to be aware of. Great movie.
From one with an Economics and hedge fund background
...the kindest thing I can say about this film, which is enjoyable, regarding its accuracy?
This movie incorrectly repeats the debunked causes of the Financial Crash, promoted by Leftists.
People ignorant of the financial system, or those unfamiliar with the basic hard science of Economics.
The real causes of the crash:
1 - The Federal Reserve - mispricing the cost of money
2 - The Federal government - The Community Reinvestment Act.
Which requires banks to loan to non-credit worthy people, if they're not White or Asian.
3 - The rating agencies rubber stamping complex derivative products, containing a range of product qualities
...as uniformly, high grade.