Ethical Issues In The Big Short Movie

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

When the real estate market hit rock bottom, trust was broken between the lenders and

The public was uneducated in how the process worked but seemed not to be bothered because it got them into the house. They don’t want a mortgage, they want a home. A home they can raise a family, build equity, build a life, have a sense of freedom. That “boom” market gave it to them. The lenders probably told them to just sign here for now and we’ll get your mortgage down to where you really want it and in a couple of years and we’ll figure out the rest. When you have no idea that the market would crash as it did, are you prepared? No, because who is thinking that your home is losing value, that people are going to lose their jobs or that the economy would turn into a recession. Not the banks or the public thought that. The perception was that the market was going to go up or stay steady, so the homeowners were going to be able to refinance and get rid of their current payment. People were going to make more money, they were going to get a raise in a couple years at their jobs and everything would be better. So when the homeowners refinanced their loan they would get a fixed rate mortgage for 30 years. But that never happened.

In the movie the big short, Lewis Ranieri, who is a banker of the Wall Street, created an idea that companies packed thousands of mortgage all bundled together to sell, which is the AAA credit-rating bond, and can obtain high yields with low risk because everyone should pay for their mortgage. The concept of Lewis Ranieri is called mortgage-backed securities (MBS). However, the demand of buying MBS is more than MBS supply. Therefore, when the risk of MBS is high, Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) is a way to change subprime loans to high- rating bonds and it can be sold again. Although CDO is full of subprime loans, it still can get AAA rating because

The world’s financial system was almost brought down in 2008 by the collapse of Lehman Brothers that was a major international investment bank at that time. The government sponsored these banks’ bailouts that were funded by tax money in order to restore the industry. Before the crisis, banks were lending irresponsible mortgages to subprime borrowers who had poor credit histories. These mortgages were purchased by banks and packaged into low-risk securities known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). CDOs were divided into tranches by its default risk. The ratings of those risks were determined by rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. However, those agencies were paid by banks and created an environment in which agencies were being generous to ratings since banks were their major clients.

Then, in the 1990s, bonds were created consisting of subprime mortgages, which were higher risk mortgages with high interest rates, made to borrowers with lower credit levels. Essentially, banks were handing out mortgages like candy to consumers who were never going to be able to make the payments, but Wall Street kept buying and packaging the mortgages into bonds. Since these bonds were inherently riskier, one wonders why investors were still willing to buy. Investors, who look at ratings by agencies such as Moodys and Standard & Poors, had no reason to believe these bonds were risky investments. The agencies, whom were being paid by Wall Street, were assigning high ratings to these risky bonds.

The people that sell houses, trick people to earn more money. They would inflate the prices to get more money to themselves by this they become rich. The contract sellers formed a League, they lied in every way to get benefit from their clients.

Buying or selling a house or an apartment is one of the biggest decisions of a person’s life. And when selling or establishing a price for real estate, people seek out real estate agents to do the dirty work. A real estate agent has to convince a prospective homeowner that he or she is trustworthy and knowledgeable. In many ways, the agent acts as a counselor to individuals and families about to embark on a huge commitment. Real estate agents have a thorough knowledge or real estate market in their community. They

The Wolf of Wall Street, directed by Martin Scorsese, takes the audience through the life of Jordan Belfort, showing the realities of crime, rampant corruption and fraud on Wall Street and the effects of it. He has everything and he knows it too. He didn’t have to convince the average person that they wanted to be rich. Belfort didn’t start out this way, he was just like the average person, barely making enough money to satisfy himself. He was always money hungry so he went to Wall Street, the financial capital of the world, to become a Wall Street stockbroker. Unfortunately, after Black Monday in 1987, he was fired from his job and forced to go to another brokerage firm on Long Island that focused primarily on penny stocks. After his huge

The incumbent credit raters had received severe criticism following the collapse in creditworthiness and prices of mortgage-and asset-backed securities during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. The three large rating agencies were accused of facilitating a vast bubble in these securities by issuing overly

Rating agencies also had a strong motivation to compete for market share by catering to their clients. In 2000, Moody’s became an independent, publicly owned firm after being released by its parent company, Dun & Bradstreet. This placed even more pressure on Moody’s managers to increase revenues and improve their shareholder’s returns. (Lawrence, p. 456) From this point on, we begin to see the credit rating agencies drastically underestimate the risks of mortgage-backed securities in a selfish attempt to further their own bottom lines. The birth of structured finance came from new techniques of quantitative analysis used by Wall Street investment banks, and suddenly, Moody’s was not just evaluating corporate, municipal, state and federal government bonds. Structured finance consisted of combining income-producing assets—everything from conventional corporate bonds to credit card debt, home mortgages, franchise payments, and auto loans—into pools and selling shares in the pool to investors. (Lawrence, p. 456)

This paper will seek to provide an overview of the real estate process and its affects on the real estate agent. An agent needs to be knowledgable about the steps required to make a sale, and the risks involved when the sale does not go as planned. Real estate sales require much of the agent, including sacrifices in their personal lives and in their financial stability. Agents must be teachable and willing to seek to see others succeed. A successful real estate sale consists of many steps, sacrifices to personal time, and an agent’s ability to work well with others while remaining incredibly flexible.

The book starts by talking about the “bond” and how it is used to make interested payments on borrowed money and then gets paid back in the long-term. In the late 1980’s Wall Street had released that is could create products like credit cared, and home mortgages which were very similar in comparison to bonds themselves. The introduction of mortgage bonds allowed the beginning of home mortgages that is a huge part of the financial crisis of 2008. Within the 1990’s mortgage bonds were created that were a much higher risk; these mortgages are called “subprime.” Due to this addition to the market the risks people were taking on became something that they would not realize. Their actions would soon create the housing bubble that occurred and created this financial crisis years and years later.

There was a vast number of ethical issues raised in the movie “Enron-the Smartest Guys in the Room” but the four I am going to focus on are listed below. Art Anderson, Ken Lay and all of the other executives did a number of unethical things which ultimately brought down Enron and affected thousands of employees and their futures. The bottom line was that each and every one of them acted out of greed for the almighty dollar.

Enron's entire scandal was based on a foundation of lies characterized by the most brazen and most unethical accounting and business practices that will forever have a place in the hall of scandals that have shamed American history. To the outside, Enron looked like a well run, innovative company. This was largely a result of self-created businesses or ventures that were made "off the balance sheet." These side businesses would sell stock, reporting profits, but not reporting losses. "Treating these businesses "off the balance sheet" meant that Enron pretended that these businesses were autonomous, separate firms. But, if the new business made money, Enron would report it as income. If the new business lost money or borrowed money, the losses and debt were not reported by Enron" (mgmtguru.com). As the Management Guru website explains, these tactics were alls designed to make Enron look like a more profitable company and to give it a higher stock price.