I have to admit that I don't understand all the intricacies of the bond markets that were being manipulated here. Whether one is a Wall Street maven or not isn't the issue. The fact is that people sold mortgages to others who had no business getting into them. I recall a 60 Minutes report on the bubble before the crash took place. The expert had them drive through a desert area, filled with enormous houses, all of which were in default. If one looked in the windows of these, you could see that some of the tenants had stripped all kinds of fixtures and walked away. There were two types of buyers, it seemed. Those that were trying for the fast buck and those that really had no clue what they were getting into. The balloon mortgages took them from affordable to bankruptcy. This was unsustainable and it wasn't long before the banks found themselves with armloads of houses and buyers with hopeless debt. The guys in the movie are aware, but, for the most part, aren't all that sympathetic to these foibles. They go in to make money and they manage to do it. The whole thing that overrides this entire film is that all the evidence was right there, but the greed of most of the parties supersedes all of that. I thought this was a fine movie with a superb lesson. To the new generation. You may not be entitled to have whatever you want without paying your dues.
Review of The Big Short
