2015 dramatised non-fiction, dir. Adam McKay:
IMDb /
allmovie. The not
particularly true story of how Just One Guy predicted the 2008
financial collapse.
As Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to
understand something, when his salary depends upon his not
understanding it!". Many people pointed out that the bubble was
unsustainable, just as many people had pointed out the dotcom and
biotech bubbles (just to name some of the more recent ones) were
unsustainable, and point out now that the AI bubble is unsustainable.
But in the short term there's money to be made, and if you're stuck
holding the bag you can avoid blame by pointing at all the other
people who've lost money doing the same thing.
There's none of that here. Horace Burry (Brad Pitt) is The One Guy Who
Gets It, and at that he's the generic cinematic version of an autist
too. "Mark Baum" (based on Steve Eisman, played by Steve Carell) is
The One Guy Who Is Angry With The System, and that's the total of his
character.
And there's nothing here to explain how this all got started, the
pressure from pension funds in particular to have investments that
could be labelled "safe" into which they could put their members'
contributions. There may have been a few suckers who believed it, but
nothing like the overwhelming majority depicted here. They didn't care
whether it was really safe, only that it had a "safe" label on it so
that they wouldn't be blamed. And sure enough, the market provided.
I suppose a film isn't really the right medium for a reasoned
argument, especially not a big-budget film that's ready to wake up the
audience with Margot Robbie in a bubble bath. Maybe a film that
actually took time to explain stuff wouldn't have been a big success.
But this one is always staying clear of saying anything dangerous,
desperate to keep you thinking that, well, maybe these guys (there are
hardly any women in this even in the entirely fictional bits of the
story) were bad, and maybe they're still in control and doing their
best to do it all again, but the overall market system is probably
just fine, please keep paying for those tickets and buying those DVDs.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.