As long as the they can blame it on anything but Capitalism everything is fine. They certainly don't want people believing it's an utter failure.

Last edited Mon Jan 25, 2016, 06:38 PM - Edit history (3)

in telling the truth.

One way I found it less than truthful - the way that it painted home borrowers - which some of the crooks on Wall Street who made the big gains have blamed. Clinton isn't the only one.

If you remember, there was a lot of let's blame the dishonest mortgage borrower ignoring the fact that there were borrowers who simply got taken advantage of and screwed and didn't realize the fraudulent market they were buying homes in (though there were plenty of people that did).

I have heard it's a good movie though but I've also heard the same thing you mentioned.

It's a fast-moving, very manic critique of Wall Street and the big banks.

They walk into what is usually a "loser convention" to see just how STUPID the people are and one guy looks at all of the suits and says, "A lot of smugness in this room. It's like someone hit a pinata filled with white people who suck at golf."

No movie would do the truth any justice.

I used to read books voraciously from Nancy Drew to Carlos Castineda ..but now i listen to them.

audible habit. It is how I get my "fun" reading done.

eom

It skewers them.

But hey! With an EU/uni honors bachelor's in economics & an MBA, and 30 years in NYC banking, & having worked for 1 Japanese, 2 German & 1 US banks at officer level, PLUS a couple of years at Standard & Poors, what does she know?

AmIright, Verne?!?!?

Come ON! Put up or shut up! We await with baited breath a list of the "many" ways in which the Big Short was less than truthful.

Are you going to dare to claim that 3 of the 4 largest "Too big to fail banks" are not in fact bigger than ever?

Oh, I know! You are going to deny the existence of Bespoke Tranche Opportunities!
http://www.ethicssage.com/2015/12/bespoke-tranche-opportunity-its-d%C3%A9j%C3%A0-vu-all-over-again.html

Do you challenge the film's presentation that Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis?
Do please identify the others.

Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis

Here’s where things get really outrageous: as The Big Short points out, only one banker was jailed for his involvement in bringing down the housing market.

and that plays right into the hands of Wall Street and Big Banking, who are, as we post, pushing new and even more destructive investment instruments. My banker relative mentioned there were 2 (out of many) aspects raised in the book which were not included in the movie, but said what WAS in the movie was absolutely true.

Very few people understand collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps or bespoke tranche opportunities.

The Big Short, Adam McKay's Oscar-nominated comedy about the coming-apart of the mortgage market and the global economic crisis that followed in 2007-8, does an exceptionally good job of explaining arcane financial instruments from collateralised debt obligations to credit default swaps. It’s a film to make the blood boil, especially when one realises how much that went wrong was the result of shared delusions and ignorance about the economic forces that shape our lives.

borrowers (they weren't all as painted in the movie) and the view pushed that only the one guy really saw what was going on .. There were a lot of people that could just look at the real estate market and know it was based on fraud.

I'll buy the book.

Believe me, I don't support the bankers.

It was highly recommended by a friend who owns big accounting firms in 3 cities. He was also CFO of GM under Roger Smith.

my first venture out into the melting snow!

The whole movie is on YouTube. Well worth the time to be more educated on this topic. I worked in it leading a fraud prevention/detection operation for a top 10 subprime lender. The harder I pushed back, the sooner they decided they didn't need me. I was released in 2007.

endemically spiritual. This is a case of 'robbing the poor man, because he is poor', for which the Old Testament condemns the worst of the rich.

The absolutely outstanding economist J K Galbraith Sen nailed it when he remarked :

'The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.'

Have you ever heard them invoke 'moral hazard' ? That apparently was what the 'widow's mite' was about in the Gospels. In putting all she had into the synagogue treasury, she was recklessly risking having to rely on the munificence of others. Yet again and again we find in the Old Testament the rich man referred to in apposition to the oppressor, the deceitful man, the fraudulent man, the violent man, and the poor man with the true Israel, as so notably in Mary's Magnificat.

And nowhere, it seems has that term, 'moral hazard' been condemned more roundly than by Jesus' teachings in his Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount ! Poor people don't have themselves to blame for their poverty, because far from being blameworthy, they are poor because, despite their oppression by the worldly-wise, their hearts remain more spiritually/morally oriented. Jesus' saying, 'Where your treasure is, there your heart is', and it has immense moral ramifications. So, in fact, the poor are punished and vilified for being good by the wicked.

Of course, these are generalizations about the rich and poor, since it was necessary even for Jesus to generalize, in order to make sense of the world.

Yes the banks are also culpable, but at the end of the day, people signed on to these loans they couldn't afford.

There is nobody more invested in me than I am. Don't assume a bank is looking out for you. If somebody is offering you something that seems too good to be true, listen to that feeling.

responsible and her? She just can't get lower than that for me.

However, what trashed the economy was not the defaulted mortgages on their own. It was the crazy derivative schemes devised by Wall Street to turn sketchy sub-prime mortgage loans into Grade A investment vehicles - and then shorting their own investments to cash in when the defaults got out of control.

They sold investments that they knew were going to tank, on a huge scale.

Supposedly people on this site are well educated, but when comments like yours are made, all I can do is:


I can talk to folks who left school in eleventh grade to tend to their parents' farm, and they get that it was not about homeowners.

There were not enough homeowners on fourteen galaxies to cause the gazillion dollar loss to the economy.

That loss was caused by the betting and gambling the Big Financial firms allowed their people to do, utilizing things like Credit Default swaps and derivatives.

when I recommended that he see The Big Short. I hope he sees it because I know he'll be shifting in his seat when the moments of conscience come through in the film.

Hillary is a Republican, through and through. No empathy for the rest of us.

Those of us who understand it was the Big Financial Firms and their gambles that caused the crash, and that those gambles were allowed due to the Modernization Act of 1999, we all know it was about first getting rid of Glass Steagal and then letting the Big Players on
Wall Street let her rip.

And many of us realize that the Clintons have been totally in bed with those Gamblers ever since Billy Boy signed on to that Modernization Act. (Also known as the Gramm-Leachey-Bliley Act)

But at least Hillary should promise that once in a while she will change the sheets!

And many of us realize that the Clintons have been totally in bed with those Gamblers ever since Billy Boy signed on to that Modernization Act. (Also known as the Gramm-Leachey-Bliley Act)

Yes!

It's all part of the game. It's what Madison Ave. is all about. Sell, sell, sell. Just tout the good stuff and don't tell them the consequences or the pitfalls. Tell them they don't need to read the fine print. It's just typical legal jibberish. Then when things come down around them - just say - they should of known. If it's too good to be true - it probably isn't.

Don't you wish you could hear the sales pitch these predators gave to get people to sign on the dotted line. Once they signed - the sigh of relief - whew!!! I got me another one.

Yeah - there's a sucker born every minute. And most politicians know that - just look at their campaign ads and promises. They feel that bait and switch is ok as long as I get my payout - like get elected.

So is this what we are to expect from Hillary? Tell them what they want to hear and get their vote. The old bait and switch. Promise them anything - then when elected settle for the easiest most expedient solution because - hell - it's the easiest. It's too hard to shoot for the best. Is she telegraphing with her comments here on blaming the homebuyers - as to what type of president she'll wind up being

So thread lightly folks. Don't make hasty decisions unless you get all the facts and read the small print. Cause in more instances than not - you don't get what you vote for.

Let the voter beware!!!!

Unlike Hillary, I'm an old-fashioned Democrat: regulate the hell out of 'em. No more preying on the American people.

How things change. Or do they?

It must be exhausting trying to cover up her past.

Of Hillary(R)

Weak.

highly critical of banks, Wall Street, and lenders.

Link to the text of the entire speech.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=77081

I misunderstood your response and thought you were talking about "The Big Short" rather than the OP.

Right-wingers still use heavily redacted propaganda videos.

Yes, right-wingers do that - and you'd be AMAZED where those videos sometimes wind up being posted.

they couldn't afford and I am pretty good with accounting having been a bookkeeper for many years and not too many people can afford real estate lawyer when they sign papers and most of it is over our heads and hard to understand.

Agents wanting their commission talked many people into higher loans than they should have had and its easy to get caught up especially when its exciting and your first house.

We just bought a house in Sept and I had to literally pull my hubby back from wanting to spend more, its so tempting when you see what a extra $50,000 can get you.

What crashed out the economy in the year 2008 was the damn derivatives and the damn Credit Swap Defaults. These were the two items that the Big Financial Players gambled on, and when the home loan borrowers didn't keep up with the terms of their loan, the economy sank.

Simply stated, there were not enough home loans handed out to crash out the economy.


You need to keep in mind that there were not enough home loans issued to tank the economy. If the Big Banks and Financial firms had not been allowed to spend day after day gambling on these things, the economy would have had a recession, but not the catastrophic wipeout it had.

And the new movie "The Big Short" describes this, in an entertaining way.

Yes, the excessive number of "bets" placed on whether or not those home loans would come to fruition were exponential in numbers to the home loans.

We had endless discussion about this, circa 2009, 2010.

Maybe you were not here at that point in time, but you can still educate yourself. You can see the movie, or you can visit these posts:
For the names of the players:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5735574

For the background of how this was allowed:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5466667

For a discussion of the immensity of the disaster (although 13 trillion is a smaller number than what occurred - more on the order of 22 trillion!)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5263724

A 100 million dollar CDS with insurance on both sides of 500 million on it. I can't remember but the insurance was for more money than existed in the world. Just kept being shuffled and as long as the music didn't stop everything was fine.

My ex supervisor when I was working was dealing in mortgage brokerage as a side job. They did not care if you had a job or not, you qualified for that new $200,000 home because the value of the home was always going to go up. I was looking at something and asked him about my payment every going up, he told me it might go up a little bit, but people always get pay raises that cover that. And if I wanted to sell the home, it would always sell for more than I have in it. I never could get a firm response from anyone, so I stayed where I was.

with interest rates that tripled after five years.They were told that this would be no problem because after five years they would have so much equity they could easily refinance into a conforming loan. The banker said it would be no problem. I know, because I was one of those people. I let the guy go through his whole spiel out of curiosity. I never had any intention of buying. I just wanted to know the drill.

You'll be climbing the Corporate ladder. In 5 years, you will be making twice as much!!!!
..so you can easily afford the balloon payments. We're just trying to help you out here.

So shady, a set-up by the banks to earn pure interest for a couple years and to get the property back to sell to another person.

My lender thought they would be able to repo my property after I paid on the mortgage for a couple years. Somehow it was crafted, part of the land as a second mortgage to even make enough for a down payment on the first. The second had a balloon payment attached, remember those traps?

That's why we have professionals, for extracting maximum value from victi.. err.. clients.

What the banks did was shady but legal. hire a lawyer, so worth it.

Even worse today for everyone with student loans. That's debt they can't walk away from.

Last edited Mon Jan 25, 2016, 07:29 PM - Edit history (2)

if the bank didn't think they could pay back the loan the bank wouldn't approve the loan, they should have known that the bank would suddenly approve anybody with a pulse - because they suddenly didn't care if the loan ever got paid back or not.

Okay, Hillary.

The 1% do that because they believe it absolves them of any malice or guilt.

TRuth is:
The BANKS are charged with protecting their depositors/investors MONEY.
It IS THEIR JOB.
To lend thousands to someone without checking their financial records, liquid cash, and liabilities is CRIMINAL MALFEASANCE, and every single one one those bankers should be sitting in jail.

Hillary is wrong, wrong, WRONG....again,
but if she wants to keep scooping up that banker money, she has to lie.

foreclosure.

I do see your point, but what is coming IMMEDIATELY down the pike is the fact that:

One) Due to the way the budget bill was passed last year (Dec 2014, not 2015) the banks and Big Financial Players will continue to be indemnified should another catastrophic economic upset occur.

And

Two) That calamity is already here in the price drop of the cost of oil.

Oil has dropped from over $ 100 a barrel to under $ 35.

And so all the derivatives that represent the gambles that the Big Financial Players have placed regarding the price of oil are again knocking out the economy. And those players will once again be bailed out!

So just wait for it - we gas guzzling consumers who have insisted on our right to drive rather than walk the 90 minute commute to work and to go ahead and heat and cool our houses will probably be blamed for the coming economic collapse.

But I wish someone could explain what caused the price of oil to drop.

TWEET!

PEACE
LOVE
BERNIE

"How NOT to run a campaign...".

Republicans did that. They claimed the democrats wanted to integrate the white suburbs with blacks and Mexicans so they FORCED the poor innocent banks into accepting mortgages from people who couldn't afford them.

Republicans also claimed it was a failed effort at social engineering.

So if your home value dropped you should blame the black guy down the street and the democrats for having the government meddle in the free market where it doesn't belong.

And people wonder why I hate Republicans.

Because I figured out what I could afford and didn't buy above that. I knew what a balloon payment was and I knew what it meant to be paying only interest with every house payment. Some of the blame has to be on those that weren't making enough money and didn't have enough brains to figure out they couldn't afford that house that they couldn't afford.

What they banks did was shitty. There needs to be punishments in place for that. But, come on, if you make $150,000 a year and you are buying a million dollar home, you should have paid more attention in your finance class in high school.

which your OP implies. But the fact is they are some to blame. It doesn't take the second coming of Einstein to figure out that if you are paying a fee so you don't have to document that the bank is making a loan it otherwise wouldn't be making.

Yes it would have been nice if they were smarter, but they were lied to and you are defending the liars. I bet you support the super rich.