I still believe the best movie on the crisis is 'The Other Guys'. But this is a close second.
There are a few minor flaws though.
The most glaring is the softpedal of Barney Frank, who had pushed Fannie and Freddie to go into subprime, and was mysteriously un-inquisitive of Countrywide during the crisis.
An other issue is the scenes with hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. He has great insight in the film, but his major contribution during the crisis was his outspoken criticism against MBIA, an insurance company that he was also shorting. IE when MBIA faltered (due to CDOs it 'insured'), Ackman made lots of money. This is told by Christine S Richard in the book Confidence Game. As in 'The Big Short' by Michael Lewis, even the 'whistleblowers' themselves had conflicts of interest. None of this is anywhere in the film.
Another problem is that the film never distinguishes between Synthetic CDOs and 'Cash' CDOs. The Synthetics were basically a form of gambling, as they were not made of any real asset, just credit default swaps. It's sort of a weird subject, but it is kind of important, because without the Synthetics, the market (thus the problem) would have been much much smaller.
The laudatory tone towards Europe is a little difficult to understand, since Europe was up to it's ears in CDOs. And one 'wall street' firm up to its armpits in subprime, Deutsche Bank, is not even American. Europe had housing bubbles and banking bailouts and other problems as well coming to roost in 2010.
The positive view of the Chinese banks is also odd, since China was in CDOs and had a bank that almost merged with Bear Stearns. China's financial industry is about as pure and well regulated as their milk or toy paint industry.
Also I laughed at the section about how in the US 'high tech sector' jobs were 'easy' to come by. Considering the place where I work uses software owned by a company in India and the number of underemployed computer people I know.
But the film also has a lot of stuff I haven't seen in the books on the crisis, most importantly the massive conflict of interest and corruption between academia, government, and business. Especially effective was how the interviewees on this subject didn't seem to 'get it'. The book EConned by Yves Smith describes the problems with the modern study of economics, but Mr Ferguson draws us some extremely specific lines between men who worked high in government, the conclusions found in their 'academic' writing, and the industry that pays them for their 'outside consulting'. This is the most devastating part of the film, to me.
And the film does fantastically with the short time it's given. I would give my eye's teeth to see the full interviews. Gillian Tett gets under a minute of screen time but she has written an entire book about how Credit Default Swaps were invented by a handful of traders at JP Morgan and how the idea was 'perverted'. (it's not really mentioned in her interview). The same could be said of many other authors interviewed.
A nice Hollywood ending might have been discussing how the Swedes dealt with their banks, but... its Charles Ferguson, don't expect a Hollywood ending.
There are a few minor flaws though.
The most glaring is the softpedal of Barney Frank, who had pushed Fannie and Freddie to go into subprime, and was mysteriously un-inquisitive of Countrywide during the crisis.
An other issue is the scenes with hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. He has great insight in the film, but his major contribution during the crisis was his outspoken criticism against MBIA, an insurance company that he was also shorting. IE when MBIA faltered (due to CDOs it 'insured'), Ackman made lots of money. This is told by Christine S Richard in the book Confidence Game. As in 'The Big Short' by Michael Lewis, even the 'whistleblowers' themselves had conflicts of interest. None of this is anywhere in the film.
Another problem is that the film never distinguishes between Synthetic CDOs and 'Cash' CDOs. The Synthetics were basically a form of gambling, as they were not made of any real asset, just credit default swaps. It's sort of a weird subject, but it is kind of important, because without the Synthetics, the market (thus the problem) would have been much much smaller.
The laudatory tone towards Europe is a little difficult to understand, since Europe was up to it's ears in CDOs. And one 'wall street' firm up to its armpits in subprime, Deutsche Bank, is not even American. Europe had housing bubbles and banking bailouts and other problems as well coming to roost in 2010.
The positive view of the Chinese banks is also odd, since China was in CDOs and had a bank that almost merged with Bear Stearns. China's financial industry is about as pure and well regulated as their milk or toy paint industry.
Also I laughed at the section about how in the US 'high tech sector' jobs were 'easy' to come by. Considering the place where I work uses software owned by a company in India and the number of underemployed computer people I know.
But the film also has a lot of stuff I haven't seen in the books on the crisis, most importantly the massive conflict of interest and corruption between academia, government, and business. Especially effective was how the interviewees on this subject didn't seem to 'get it'. The book EConned by Yves Smith describes the problems with the modern study of economics, but Mr Ferguson draws us some extremely specific lines between men who worked high in government, the conclusions found in their 'academic' writing, and the industry that pays them for their 'outside consulting'. This is the most devastating part of the film, to me.
And the film does fantastically with the short time it's given. I would give my eye's teeth to see the full interviews. Gillian Tett gets under a minute of screen time but she has written an entire book about how Credit Default Swaps were invented by a handful of traders at JP Morgan and how the idea was 'perverted'. (it's not really mentioned in her interview). The same could be said of many other authors interviewed.
A nice Hollywood ending might have been discussing how the Swedes dealt with their banks, but... its Charles Ferguson, don't expect a Hollywood ending.