The big short showing movie#

Michael Lewis, from whose book the movie was adapted, got his training at Salomon Brothers in the mid-80s, as mortgage based securities were being invented.

They were the guys on the Titanic who knew what the iceberg meant and booked reserved seats in the lifeboats. Then you realize that their vindication means the collapse of the American economy. Because these guys are smart, because they are antisocial and because they were laughed at by smug fools who believed the conventional wisdom, you identify with them, and you wait anxiously for their vindication. We have been taught by generations of fiction to identify with characters who are outsiders and rebels. You find yourself rooting for clever 'outsiders and weirdos,' as one of them puts it, who saw what nobody else wanted to see - that an immense structure of mortgage based securities was doomed to collapse because it rested on the backs of subprime borrowers who couldn't support the weight and should never have been loaned the money. Harry Knowles once wrote a review of Das Boot that said the movie was so well made that you'd find yourself rooting for Nazi sailors trying to sink American ships. Some of these assumptions may be incorrect and may be far more manipulative than they could have ever imagined, which in turn may throw curves into the process. That latter aspect may not sit well with Baum. All three of these groups work on the premise that the banks are stupid and don't know what's going on, while for them to win, the general economy has to lose, which means the suffering of the general investor who trusts the financial institutions. Wanting in on the action but not having the official clout to play, they decide to call an old 'friend', retired investment banker Ben Rickert, to help out. Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley, who are minor players in a $30 million start-up garage company called Brownfield, get a hold of Vennett's prospectus on the matter.

In addition to Burry's information, they further believe that most of the mortgages are overrated by the bond agencies, with the banks collating all the sub-prime mortgages under AAA packages. Baum and his associates, who work at an arms length under Morgan Stanley, decide to join forces with Vennett despite not totally trusting him. An errant telephone call to FrontPoint Partners gets this information into the hands of Mark Baum, an idealist who is fed up with the corruption in the financial industry. Jared Vennett with Deutschebank gets wind of what Burry is doing and, as an investor believes he too can cash in on Burry's beliefs. The banks believe that Burry is a crackpot and therefore are confident in that they will win the deal. Autonomy within the company allows Burry to do largely as he pleases, so Burry proceeds to bet against the housing market with the banks, who are more than happy to accept his proposal for something that has never happened in American history. He believes that the US housing market is built on a bubble that will burst within the next few years. Michael Burry, an eccentric ex-physician turned one-eyed Scion Capital hedge fund manager, has traded traditional office attire for shorts, bare feet and a Supercuts haircut. Three separate but parallel stories of the U.S mortgage housing crisis of 2005 are told.

The big short showing