Burry's The Big Short

The mortgage crisis of 2007 marked catastrophe for millions of homeowners who suffered from foreclosure and short sales. Most of the problems involving the foreclosing of families’ homes could boil down to risky borrowing and lending. Lenders were pushed to ensure families would be eligible for a loan, when in previous years the same families would have been deemed too high-risk to obtain any kind of loan. With the increase in high-risk families obtaining loans, there was a huge increase in home buyers and subsequently a rapid increase in home prices. As a result, prices peaked and then began falling just as fast as they rose. Soon after families began to default on their mortgages forcing them either into foreclosure or short sales. Who was to blame for the risky lending and borrowing that caused the mortgage meltdown? Many might blame the company Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but in reality the entire system of buying and selling and free market failed home owners and the housing economy.

Real estate values further rose, luring lenders into taking more risks in their financial transactions. All this was done in the hope of raking in huge sums of dollars since the prices of the mortgages had gone up. Consequently, a large number of people, including those who would not have qualified under normal conditions, were able to secure mortgages. They soon realized that they had blundered but it was too late. Due to increased supply of homes being disposed off by lenders and other financial institutions, the demand went down sharply. There was no more money flowing in the economy as many people now stopped taking the mortgages. This could have resulted into the mortgage crisis.

Hollywood films sometimes survive long after its initial release, moving its characters and messages into mainstream culture. One such example is Oliver Stones’ 1987 film Wall Street, which introduced the world to the infamous Gordon Gekko. Stone set his film in the 1980s around the time when several insider trading scandals and prosecutions were in the news. The film portrayed the high-flying lifestyles of New York traders and speculators and showed the extreme excess and greed of American culture. Gordon Gekko captured the essence of this greedy lifestyle with his “take-no-prisoners” school of capitalism. Gekko is portrayed as a corporate raider. He buys underperforming companies, breaks them up and sells their parts at a healthy profit.

A few years later the market took a turn for the worse, where interest rates were on the rise, and homes were losing their value quickly. Now borrowers that were in these interest only ARM’s needed to refinance these loans because the rates were going up, to a point where the homeowner was not be able to afford the payment. The Federal Reserve tried to stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates during the recession in early 2001, from over 6% in 2000, to a rate just above 1.25% in 2002. These low rates encouraged many Americans to apply for loans for homes that a few years ago they would have not been able to. To encourage the homeownership boom, the Bush administration urged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to allot more money for low-income borrowers so they could buy their own homes. This resulted in the subprime mortgage

Michael Lewis, The Big Short, film strategically provided three separate but parallel stories of the U.S mortgage housing of 2008. The movie demonstrated how Wall Street, in a desperate search for profits, lunched “bonds” products with riskier mortgages. As a result, lenders were no longer interested in if a borrower could pay them back. In disbelieved, I noticed deceitful tactics that lenders used, throughout the movie, to convince Americans to take out mortgages they could not afford. Chronologically, Americans’ saving levels dropped while countries ' savings tripled. Once the Recession was in full effect, the US government rescued Wall Street, passing an unimaginably large bill, the bill we are still paying off. To most Americans’ surprise, nearly all of the rescue money went into Wall Street executives’ pockets.

After reading, “The Little Book That Still Beats the Market” by Joel Greenblatt I believe everyone is capable of learning how to make money for themselves after the advice given on the value of investing. Greenblatt communicates in a form of storytelling into a conversation as he discusses how if you truly trust something and believe on it then it will help you and it can work towards your advantage. In this case, it is believing that the famous magic formula truly works in order to help you make money. At first, Greenblatt helps us understand how to view the stock market. We must always think of the future because we always have to think ahead; when it comes to a business and investing we need to figure out what will the value of that company be during all of its upcoming lifetime. Once the value is determined it helps us analyze how the worth of the money is going to change from the present to the future. Knowing that value is what will help us make the decision whether to invest or not. Greenblatt provides an example by asking his son to decide whether or not he would invest in someone else gum business. The emphasis is figuring

The Big Short is based on a real life story that is about the 2008 financial crisis which was a result of housing bubble. Sadly, unethical choices made by bankers, financial institutions and rating agencies led to a crisis that hurt the World economy badly. The main ethical business dilemma is that many people were aware of the potential risks; however, they preferred to avoid the truth, and play stupid. There are many dilemmas throughout the movie that support this finding.

Anyone that was living in America, or even watching from abroad, knows that in 2008 America had a huge collapse of the housing market. Homes were foreclosed on in record numbers causing the real estate balloon to burst. But the collapse did not happen overnight and in many ways was destined to happen. According to Investopedia.com in order to attract buyers and sell houses, mortgages were offered to less than qualified applicants. Then just a few years before the collapse subprime mortgages made up 20% of the market. (Investopedia.com) Factors such as the 1993 passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 9-11 terrorist attacks led to an increase in unemployment. With unemployment numbers climbing many homeowners

Lewis focuses the book from the perspectives of leaders from three investment firms that saw the future of the financial market and its inevitable collapse in the early 2000’s. Though given the opportunity, these men were not heroes. Instead of spreading the news and rebelling against Wall Street for infecting the market, they were more interested in making a profit. Michael Burry was focused on his company Scion Capital and buying credit default swaps to make both him and his investors’ money. Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai focused on betting against Wall Street and ultimately in the end made fortunes.

This was a flood of irresponsible mortgages lending in America. Loans were doled out to “subprime” borrowers with poor credit histories who struggled to repay them. From that point on, it was only a matter of time before there was a financial crisis. The same process went on until everything unraveled. The mortgage lender sells mortgage to the investment banker, but before the investment banker could sell his mortgage package to the investors, one of the irresponsible families defaults on their mortgage.

The documentary “The Smartest Guys in the Room”, was a story that followed the company ERON and how they went from having major success to filing for bankruptcy. The film followed Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Lou Pai, and Andy Fastow who all worked for ERON and all had “big ideas” for the company. These all had everyone thinking they were all “the smartest guys in the room”, and really cared about the company but in reality they were all stealing money from ERON. They were all stealing money while Andy Fastow job was to cover up the fact that the company was 30 billion dollars in debt and to make it look like it was money actually coming in instead of out. Soon it all caught up to them, an account soon realized that ERON numbers did not add up and

The problem was everyone who qualified for a mortgage already had one. Lenders knew if they sold a mortgage to a person that defaults the lender gets the house, and houses were always increasing in value in that market, that would be a valuable asset to sell. To keep up with the demand from investors, lenders started selling mortgages to borrowers who wouldn’t have qualified before because of the risk for default. These mortgages are called sub-prime mortgages and lenders started creating tons of them. In the unregulated market, lenders employed predatory tactics to get more borrowers with attractive offers such as no money down, no credit history required, even no proof of income. People never would have qualified before were now buying large houses, and the lenders sold their mortgages to Investment bankers. The investors packed subprime mortgages in with prime mortgages so credit agencies would still give a AAA rating. The rating Agencies who had a conflict of interest by receiving payments from the investment banks, had no liability if their credit ratings were correct or not. They turned a blind eye to the risky CDOs and kept giving AAA ratings. This worked for a while and everyone was happy including the new homeowners. The housing market became hyper inflated with more homeowners than ever. Wall Street continued to sell their CDO’s which were ticking time bombs. The subprime mortgages began

With all of the incentives and mortgage products given so easily to people that couldn’t afford the high prices (including interest rates), many people defaulted on their first mortgages because they were no longer were able to receive the profit from the homes they first intended to flip. “During the first quarter of 2008, nearly 9% of all mortgage holders were delinquent or in foreclosure, the highest rate since recordkeeping began in 1979. Foreclosure filings more than

Money, sex, drugs, and greed-these four words are characterized and displayed profoundly throughout the movie Wolf of Wall Street. Based on a true story about the life of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), the movie is narrated and gives insight to the struggle, power, and addictions that surrounded Belfort’s life. Belfort was a stockbroker who learned his way as an entry-level worker on Wall Street before creating his own company Stratton Oakmont. Belfort quickly learned that success on Wall Street was a result of doing any means necessary, regardless if it was the truth or providing a false sense of hope. His main scam involved selling cheap stocks and inflating the prices so the brokers can sell at a high price. Although this was illegal, Belfort was so involved and addicted to money and drugs that his scamming ways were irrelevant.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis is a non-fiction New York Times #1 bestseller. This text is published by W.W. Norton & Company and contains 320 pages. This is a book that focuses in on the 2008 financial crisis and the build up of the housing and credit bubble during the 2000’s. The author channels in on the persons who saw the crisis coming that wanted to protect their investments or did not want to speak of the issue.