Michael Lewis 'The Big Short': A Career In The Financial Industry

Section Two: 1. The documentary, “Inside Job” provides an interpretation of the causes and consequences of the 2008 global financial crisis. Is this interpretation compelling? Be sure to include institutional, ideological and interest factors in your analysis. The movie, the

Author Herman Melville of, “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” is able to give the reader a glimpse into the law offices during the mid-1850s. The reflection of the narrator and how well he knows his law-office associates, he is able to describe their habits and traits for a comical touch. As the narrator is confident in his employment choices, he hires a scrivener for his office.

Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in

In 1938, and in the teeth of the longest and fiercest depression that the United States had ever known, capital spending hit an all time high. That’s right! In 1938 the men who owned America began to pour millions of Dollars into new plant and equipment as if there was no tomorrow. We don’t think much about it today, because it has been a long time since the United States has experienced a real bone jolting economic slowdown. The fact is, however, that the very best time for the industrialist to invest in new technologies is in the middle of a depression. This is because it is at such times that labor, raw materials, and new equipment can be purchased at rock bottom prices. Henry Ford may have jumped the gun a bit. He shut down his River

shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than 25 years, or both.

Books and movies that show a story about the same topic normally are a little different if not a lot different than the other. Other stories such as Moneyball written by Michael Lewis are pretty similar comparing core topics. In 2001, Lewis, living in Berkeley California noticed something unusual was going on. The Oakland A’s baseball team were consistently winning on a small budget. Moneyball is a nonfiction story, both the movie and book revolve around the same main topics dealing with the Oakland A’s, and how coach Billy Beane (manager) challenges the system and confronts conventional wisdom when his is forced to rebuild his small market team on a minimal budget. While oppositions from the old guard, television, fans and their own field manager. Beane is given help from a young, Yale economist named Paul, together they build a team of misfits and along the way, forever have changed the way the game is played off the field. Although there are some differences comparing the book and the movie each story portrayed more same core aspects. Such as both stories are based directly on the general manager of the Oakland A’s Billy Beane, the stories also show how even if the teams lose they still show success off the field, and shows the hard work and dedication that coaches have to go through managing a major league baseball team.

“The decision to study finance opens doors to perhaps some of the widest ranges of jobs available, as every type of organization needs financial assistance and oversight, no matter what they do. There is no question that the recent financial crisis has changed the landscape of careers in finance, but finance remains among the most competitive and attractive of all career fields (International student)”. The purpose of this paper is to describe two (2) financial career options that an individual with a finance education might pursue and explain the value that such a position adds to a company. The two financial career options that a person with finance education might pursue are financial specialists and finance analysts.

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.

It is a romping tale of decadence and depravity that draws heavy criticism for having few redeeming literary or moral qualities. However, the memoir presents several unique and inherently valuable qualities. It presents a rare viewpoint of a specific moment in American history through the eyes of a great fraudster. Additionally, The Wolf of Wall Street’s writing style presents a unique opportunity for a non-fictional account criminal activities, a genre that is relatively small. Finally, the book has become a cornerstone of American culture and has even received a film adaptation. Regardless of Belfort’s ethical or legal standing his memoir is a valuable work that portrays a twisted version of the American

The movie 'Wall Street' is a representation of poor morals and dissapointing business ethics in the popular world of business. This movie shows the negative effects that bad business morals can have on society. The two main characters are Bud Fox played by Charlie Sheen and Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas. Bud Fox is a young stockbroker who comes from an honest working-class family but on the other hand, Gordon Gekko is a millionaire who Bud admires and wants to be associated with. Greed seems to be a huge theme of this movie. This movie portrays the unethical society we live in. It shows how money oriented society has become and that people will do almost anything to get ahead.

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, many commentators attempted to analyze the roots of the conflict from a political or economic perspective. Anthropologist Karen Ho, a veteran of Wall Street as well as an academic, attempted to understand the reason that Wall Street behaves the way it does in her 2009 anthropological study of American finance entitled Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street from a cultural perspective. The central paradox with which Ho begins her book is: " the economy experienced not only record corporate profits and the longest rising stock market ever, but also record downsizings," further concentrating the wealth in America (Ho 2009: 1-2). But how can corporations grow richer as the American public as a whole grows poorer? Corporations no longer view themselves as responsible for taking care of their employees, creating good products, or serving their original mission. Instead, the focus is on generating shareholder wealth (Ho 2009:3). Shareholders, not the larger public, have become the symbolic and real focus of firm strategy. The shareholder "symbolized and 'stood in' for the whole of the corporation and became the sole locus of concern and analysis" during the time Ho conducted her study in the late 1990s and continues to this day (Ho 2009:175)

Many people became skeptical of how the housing market was going. A select few of these people found a way to bet against the market called credit default swaps (McKay). This was betting against CDO’s. In The Big Short, they explain credit default swaps in the idea of a poker game. If someone has an 87% chance of winning the hand, the majority of people will just assume that person with the better hand will win. But, there is someone who has looked into it more and believes they will lose that hand. Therefore, those who think they will lose will bet others a certain amount of money. They will say, “I’ll bet you three to one odds they lose, for $20,000.” (McKay) So, if the person is correct, betting that the 87% will occur they will be paid

I have to admit, it is an odd choice but yes, I have decided to break through the ethics out of a completely unethical film. I will be discussing my own thoughts and perspectives revolved around the movie, from reasons and circumstances that leads to an unethical life, to outcomes of it and much more.

At the height of the 2008 financial crisis, Mr. Lawrence G. McDonald wrote a book on the fall of Lehman Brothers, entitled "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense." This book is a risk manager 's guide to the right and wrong moves on Wall St., and explains why investors must stay ahead of policies coming out

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.