Margin Call (2011)

Last weekend I watched a low-budget ($3m) first film from director J.C. Chandor, whose father spent 33 years with Merrill Lynch. Despite the low budget, Chandor was able to attract a stellar cast: Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, Simon Baker, Stanley Tucci, Aasif Mandhvi, that guy who played young Spock.

The story covers about 36 hours in a fictional Wall Street trading house after a low-level risk analyst -- played by Spock -- discovers that the company's risk from highly-leveraged toxic assets is greater than the company's market capitalization.

Management eventually decides to dump the assets back on their customers, thus saving themselves from a spectacular bankruptcy but at the price of losing every customer they are thus screwing over.

It was a fascinating character play, as everyone wrestles with shooting themselves in the foot to avoid shooting themselves in the face.

Hmm, that could be worth a rental. Not my usual fare, and anything about money usually bores me to tears if it is overly technical. Wall Street was alright because it was dramatic and was more about the Gordon Gecko character than about economics. How would you describe the complexity of the technical issues in the story in relation to actual drama?

The movie intentionally glosses over most of the technical details. They mention tertiary tranches on credit default swaps, but you don't have to know what they're talking about to follow the story.

Because of the low budget almost everything takes place on the one floor of the building. It's like "Twelve Angry Men" in that its a character drama instead of an action drama. But the sense of foreboding and impending disaster is palpable.

Have you seen some of the docs about it? The Flaw was good.

Jenni wrote:

Have you seen some of the docs about it? The Flaw was good.

Couple days ago I watched an excellent doc on the financial meltdown called "Inside Job." Did a marvelous job of laying out what happened, and why -- all the way back to Reagan's deregulations -- without accusing anyone along the way of intentionally being evil. Just a long line of libertarian bad decisions eventually led to the moral hazard where banks had to make crazy loans to compete.

A couple books I have read, most notably Michael Lewis's "Liar's Poker" and "The Big Short," are much more willing to ascribe evil intentions to the players who got rich in the deal.

I've had the "Inside Job" DVD around here for many months, but haven't watched it. Will do so soon.
Thanks for reminding me.

I watched it yesterday.
It was good, I have to say.
It also sounded very much like some arguments I had over a DU about how this whole thing went back to the Reagan years and the CDOs, etc.
So I was right all along. Which sort of annoys me because if I know better other people should have too.

Jenni wrote:

this whole thing went back to the Reagan years

Many things do. Any intelligent debate on gun control inevitably comes back to Reagan's defunding of the mental health industry in the early 1980s, turning out thousands of individuals of limited self-control to fend for themselves on the streets. Our entire infrastructure to care for the less fortunate was decimated -- and all of the new entrants like the suicidal soldiers returning from the Middle East -- find that there are no resources to aid them.

I don't klnow if it's true or not, but I heard recently that more soldiers have taken their own lives than were killed in combat in, I think it was Afghanistan.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I don't klnow if it's true or not, but I heard recently that more soldiers have taken their own lives than were killed in combat in, I think it was Afghanistan.

There's a pretty good article in The Guardian about this.

The Guardian wrote:

Across all branches of the US military and the reserves, a similar disturbing trend was recorded. In all, 349 service members took their own lives in 2012, while a lesser number, 295, died in combat.

To me, the most remarkable, and often unmentioned, number is the veterans who commit suicide.

The Guardian wrote:

...one of an astonishing 6,500 former military personnel who killed themselves in 2012, roughly equivalent to one every 80 minutes.

Jenni wrote:

It also sounded very much like some arguments I had over a DU about how this whole thing went back to the Reagan years and the CDOs, etc.
So I was right all along. Which sort of annoys me because if I know better other people should have too.

That's exactly the way I see it, Jenni. A year or more before things took a dump, I was engaged in an argument on DU, in which I expressed my concerns about the economy. I said that, being based primarily on debt, the economy was very fragile and one hiccup could create massive problems. The opposition, of course, insisted that, essentially, capitalism never makes a mistake and the economy was in excellent condition and would continue to grow.

I do not for a moment believe that you and I and other common folks could see what was coming and all of those involved in the scams could not. They were not a bunch of innocent, unsuspecting, honest businessmen. They were - and are - thieves who know exactly what they are doing and exactly what the consequences (to you and me and other common folks) will be. They got their money and they got off the hook.

This is very chilling:

Quote :

William told his mother: "You would hate me if you knew what I've done out there."

"I will never hate you. You are the same person you always were," she said.

"No, Mom," he countered. "The son you loved died over there."