"The Big Short" And "Margin Call"

Boulder, Colorado

December 29, 2020

The above is a quote from "Margin Call."

Two good movies. Watched "The Big Short" yesterday and "Margin Call" today. (My body is telling me to take a break from hiking.). I thought "The Big Short" was innovative the way it help you understand the terminology of MBSs, credit default swaps and CDOs. For some reason I liked "Margin Call" a bit more -- perhaps it was because of Jeremy Lyons character. I thought he played his role so well; he was a wolf and a villain in his $10,000 suit and pinky ring.

Hard to believe that crisis was only 12 years ago. And Congress is already loosening the reigns. What will precipitate the next crisis? I thought it would be Covid but what the stock market has done since March/April is ... I think the word might be nonsensical. It is certainly not based on historical measures of valuation.

I fault both movies for not doing more to help us understand the tremendous damage done by subprime mortgages and MBSs. There were real victims. And it is criminal that the the people on Wall Street and the subprime mortgage brokers basically got to keep their ill-gotten gains and no one went to jail.

In my head, I am prepared for the stock market to pull back 25 percent and stay at that level for a long-time. Anything better than that, I'll be happy. Anything worse than that, I won't be surprised, but it will be impactful.