Photo credit: Janet Donovan
It’s kind of like global warming; just when you think it’s real, along comes a blizzard and global warming becomes a joke for naysayers…..then the sun rises, the snow melts and we are back to square one. We’ll call it The Itsy Bitsy Spider affect. The same might be said for the US financial markets. We may not have seen the collapse of the housing market and banks in 2008 coming, but we should have learned something from it. Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book gave us Too Big to Fail and who can forget Leonardo di Caprio in Wolf of Wall Street?
Since the 2008 collapse, Hollywood on the Potomac has sat down with a number of economists who are warning us to watch out, some more forcefully than others. Take David Stockman, for instance, whose book The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America. We sat down with Stockman at a Qorvis sponsored event where he put it rather succinctly…..”It’s like a Roach Motel, the money comes in but doesn’t go out.” Or Richard Vague with whom we chatted about his tome The Next Economic Disaster at the New America Foundation event where Steve Clemons introduced the program this way: “I like succinct books,” said Clemons. “I like books that get right to the point, tell you what you need to know and then set up the debate, put out data and then you can either applaud or rip it apart pretty quickly and they don’t obfuscate behind 900 pages. To put this in context, Richard used to be the ‘King’ of the credit card business.” Clemons moderated the panel discussion on Why it’s Coming and How To Avoid It.
David Stockman
It should be no surprise then that Hollywood can’t keep its hands off the subject matter and has done it again with The Big Short, nominated for Best Picture, Academy Awards 2016.
Film synopsis:
Four outsiders to Wall Street use what are sometimes perceived as eccentric insights into the U.S. financial markets to predict the meltdowns of the housing market and big banks in 2008. Betting together on the coming catastrophe, the quartet manages to invest shrewdly and amass a fortune, all while exposing the corruption of several large financial institutions. The film stars Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt. Distributed by Paramount Pictures, the film is nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Bale, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
On Tuesday night, The Brookings Institute will have a private screening followed by a panel discussion with the film’s director, Adam McKay and financial experts.
Christian Bale plays Michael Burry in The Big Short. Photo credit courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Regency Enterprises
The Big Short trailer:
