Dramatization of predicting the real estate bond market collapse in 2008.

Rating: Null/10 (12 May 2016)

We watched this on DVD from our public library. Even though my wife had a career in Finance, and had executive positions in banks and mortgage companies, even she had difficulty keeping up with the loan instruments discussed here. I would suspect most viewers would also have difficulty.
So let's just discuss the broad points. The players in the real estate game make an assumption that real estate values will always go higher, and keep going higher. Part of the outfall of that was to use the risky subprime instruments, which would never be a problem if everything kept going higher. But it can't, and it didn't, and part of the result we saw in 2008 when the stock market itself dropped about 50% in what now is being called "the great recession."
My wife and I are retired, we were among those who were scared as we saw our retirement investment drop and drop. But we took the position that in time things would go back up so we held all our positions, remained diversified, didn't sell any equity positions, and in a few years everything was back to normal.
Many, many were not so fortunate. Some made the rash decision to sell their equities when they were low, they had a hard time recovering. Many lost their pensions, or their homes, or both.
I would think many younger viewers would have a harder time appreciating this movie, but those of us who are older can more easily identify with the themes. There are many characters here, but I will mention only one, Christian Bale as Doctor Michael Burry. Yes, he was a medical doctor who left his residency to start a hedge fund. He is featured prominently as perhaps the first one to dig deeply into the subprime market. Through his analysis of mortgage lending practices in 2003 and 2004, he correctly forecasted the real estate bubble would collapse as early as 2007. Though he suffered an investor revolt before his predictions came true, Burry earned a personal profit of $100 million and a profit for his remaining investors of more than $700 million.
The sad part of all this is the corruption that became apparent during the whole crisis, and in effect the rich got richer while the poor lost their homes and retirement savings.