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The underlying message is that you need to understand all these complex financial instruments to understand the financial meltdown of 2008.
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Complex: In the first scene of The Big Short, the narrator (played by Ryan Gosling) explains how a trader named Lew Ranieri invented the mortgage-backed security, which packaged together boring low-yield mortgage loans into much cooler high-yield bonds, which later “mutated into a monstrosity that collapsed the global economy.” The Australian bombshell Margot Robbie, yet another Explanatory Cameo contender, then details how Wall Street dumped risky subprime mortgages into those bonds, a lecture she delivers, since bonds are not a naturally sexy topic, while sipping champagne in a bubble bath. And it severely understates what has been done to make sure the crisis doesn’t happen again. It ultimately misstates the relative importance of stupidity versus fraud in creating the crisis. It actually overstates the complexity of the crisis. But as well-acted and well-crafted as the film version may be, it has three basic explanatory problems. To disclose my crisis bias, I helped former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner with his memoir Michael Lewis, the best-selling author who wrote the book that inspired The Big Short, wrote a lovely review. Neither did regular CDO’s, short for collateralized debt obligations, even though celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain deserves consideration for that explanatory Oscar after popping up to compare them to three-day-old seafood stew. But synthetic CDO’s didn’t create the crisis either, any more than Gomez’s microphone creates hit records. The right-wing notion that Big Government created the crisis is absurdly ahistorical. They’re wrong: it is appropriately brutal to Wall Street and the financial sector. Some conservatives have argued that The Big Short is unfairly brutal to Wall Street and the financial sector. It was instructive to see McKay discuss his views on the collapse and its aftermath in an interview with Vox, because despite his ambitious vision for his film, he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about. Its angry take on the financial crisis is misleading and its furious take on financial reform is wrong. But The Big Short is not necessarily, with more apologies to Gomez, good for you, unless you happen to be Bernie Sanders. I get why so many critics have given it, as Gomez might say, that same old love. Why was everyone groaning? A bet is a two-way deal, so shouldn’t the winners of those side bets be cheering? And anyway, why would a bunch of random side bets among consenting adults nuke the economy? Finally, if the dealer is supposed to represent Wall Street, because the house always wins, why did Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and so many other Wall Street behemoths lose so badly that their firms collapsed in 2008? But since many Americans will be inclined to believe The Big Short’s cinematic version of the mortgage crisis, it’s worth noting that its analysis of what actually happened to the American economy-even down to the virtuosic little explainer asides-doesn't really add up. Oscar-nominated director Adam McKay deserves credit for trying to make such complex financial concepts accessible. She's the queen and those men are her fools.That’s not a bad introduction to the synthetic CDO, the derivative the movie’s narrator describes as the “atomic bomb” that nuked the global economy. But anything she's doing is entirely her choice. The veteran stripper is commanding, confident and unashamedly lapping up all the money that's being thrown at her. That's when Ramona (Lopez) takes the stage. She's left clasping little more than a couple of $20 bills after hours of grabby men yelling "Lucy Liu!" at her. Hustlers' focus is Destiny (Constance Wu), a stripper trying to take care of her grandmother and have enough cash left over after a night of paying off everyone else in the club, including the stage manager, the DJ and the security guard. The film, written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, is based on the true story of a group of strippers who decide to turn the tables on their clients in the wake of the GFC. There's talk of an Oscar nomination, and it wouldn't be hyperbolic to say that she's a real contender.Ī heist thriller-cross-social drama, Hustlers' weight is wrapped in the veneer of diamantés and stilettos, but there is real substance here. Hustlers is also a career-best performance for Jennifer Lopez whose oeuvre of lightweight rom-coms belie the singer-actor's dramatic talents. Lili Reinhart, Jennifer Lopez, Keke Palmer, and Constance Wu star in Hustlers.