A Must-See Film for All Americans

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2016)

The Big Short should be required viewing for everyone in the world affected by the financial crisis in 2008, which means almost everyone in the Western world and certainly everyone in America. Michael Lewis seemed to be one of the few journalists who actually understood what was going on and described it to readers in his book while Fox News was blaming the whole thing on a few deadbeat homeowners who didn't know the difference between a variable rate mortgage and money left on the street. Even the film tried to place at least part of the blame on strippers with a couple of home equity loans which is complete crap.
One of the conversations in the book went something like this: "Who would take out a loan on a house if they couldn't make the first payment?" This was countered by Steve Eiseman, "Who would give a home loan to someone who couldn't make the first payment?"
The housing meltdown was the biggest crime in US history and, as the film points out, no one went to jail for it except one unlucky Wall Street slob. The truth is that the police should have taped off all of this end of Manhattan and designated it a crime scene and out courts should have brought a huge crowd of people to justice. Instead no laws were changed and the same thing, or something even worse, is likely to happen again sooner rather than later.
The film does a marvelous job not only of making the technical details understandable to the layman but in making a supremely entertaining film (the most important thing in cinema). Spoiler Alert: The bad guys win in this movie. The rest of us lost and will continue to lose until we stand up and do something about it.