After all, Hillary told them to "cut it out."

It's now "I've got mine and yours. Who are you, again?"

This CDO mess is a rerun, of course, enabled by political enablers. Crackpot Elizabeth Warren has been warning...USA (Rome) is burning. Boring Bernie is taking it to the streets best he can.

Oh look, there's Trump!! (the Court Jester)

I have read Michael Lewis's book multiple times. It is a terrific and highly educational narrative about what exactly happened to bring about the 2007-2008 worldwide economic meltdown, told from the perspective of the few who saw ahead of time the inevitable. And they bet against the bank. And they won.

The main hero of the book has to be Steve Eisman, a cranky, socially awkward, tell-the-truth kind of guy with a social conscience. He supplies many of the humorous, laugh out loud, situations in the book with his totally unbuttoned interactions with delusional Wall Street insiders, and their dupes! In the film he is played by Steve Carroll, somehow cast as a character named Mark Baum. Near the end of the book, after making a fortune betting against Wall Street and watching everything melt down around them, Eisman and his compatriots settle on the steps of St. Patrick's. It is a poignant and important scene because it reveals an important facet of Eisman's soul. He sees no joy in his success. That is both the heart of Lewis's narrative and Eisman's.

There are other narratives woven into the book. Mike Burry, cast as Mike Burry in the film by Christian Bale, the one-eyed physician with Asbergers who gave up medicine to start an investment firm, made his clients rich, and ended up being hated by all of them.

Then, there's Greg Lippmann, the somewhat smarmy Deutsches Bank bond trader, who pitched credit default swaps to the world enabling the principles to bet against Wall Street corruption. One of the telling quotes (to Lippmann) comes from Eisman's colleague, Vinny Daniels, "I just want to know how you are going to fuck me." Yup, Lippmann's smarmy. He both made the skeptics rich but also helped enable Wall Street to produce more toxic product (the synthetic CDO) to sell to the dupes, wittingly or otherwise. Cast in the film as Jared Bennett, played by Ryan Gosling.

Preliminary reviews are great. My friends and I will be going en masse to see it together. One is a professor emeritus in economics. The after viewing discussion over beers will undoubtedly be lively.

I hope this helps your thread.



on edit: the film also stars Brad Pitt, as the Ben Hockett character. And why does DU delete "quoted strings" from post titles?

followed a post out of the MPLS Star and Trib yesterday,you would see how this affects or is about to affect some 150k Teamsters Pension payouts. Remember,this pension fund was and is under the control of the DOJ and Administered by people from Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan,tons of toxic crap was dumped into this fund and now it is blowing up. One of the biggest POS is derivatives based bonds. And you wondered were all the crap went,well it is in defined pension funds of hundreds of thousand State,County,and City Employees funds. Mrs.Warren has been screaming to high hell about this for years.