It will premiere on May 23. In this movie Bernanke/Paulson/Geithner are portrayed as valiant knights trying to stave of a disaster. In fact, "Bernanke" (played by Paul Giamatti) is uttering something like "Don't do this [bailout] and you will have no economy on Monday". In addition, I don't think that they even mention AIG, which is curious to say the least.

My point is-they "saved" the situation in 2008, but how could we even be in a position where investment/mortgage bankers were close to destroying the livelihood of "EVERYONE"? I don't have an answer, but I don't think that society as whole should tolerate this state of affairs and demand immediate and lasting changes. If lower GDP is the price, I think we should, as a society, pay it before the next crisis hits us since the banking system so far did not change much.

Ah...looks like the best history rewrite money could buy ;)

shame on hbo. looks like ill have to cancel my subscription.

Nice. Looks like HBO makes heroes out of criminals.

Where can you express your sentiments to HBO?

New interview with producer at Hollywood premier via Yahoo (vid).
Too Big to Fail’, the Movie: Why Andrew Ross Sorkin Is Worried About a Sequel

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-tic....

Last night I watched Piers Morgan interviewing Andrew Sorkin and James Woods. Even after Sorkin clearly identified the root causes of the problem (too much bad debt and leverage) and that it has now been transferred to governments, both claimed they could not see it coming and will not be able to see the next one coming. How can anyone with the intelligence to understand the causes not know what's coming? If he had said he understands what's coming but not when, I would have accepted that....but to now claim that he won't be able to see the next one coming is mind boggling. As Keyshon Johnson might say "C'Mon Man!".

And no fraud of course....just a little too much exuberance.

Cynthia Nixon: "None of the conditions that led to this crisis have changed in any way ... if anything, they've set the stage for a bigger crisis coming up."

At least one of them seems to have a clue.

I don't have HBO and never will.

Nike...Exactly right. BTW, the stock chart of Goldman (GS) is eerily reminiscent of Bear Stearns of 2007-2008: a lazy retreat from 180ish to 135. Perhaps, some of former Bear/Lehman traders hold a bit of a grudge... ;) .

Goldman's chart is incredibly weak. It is in a very long term downslope and the 2008 debacle looks like a pothole on the road to hell.

GS in trouble. Technically and fundamentally. From "long term greedy" to...? It will be a case-study in brand-destruction.

GS, BAC death cross continues:

http://www.etftrends.com/2011/05/financi....

Last 5 days even worse. This could be the short of the year.

/n investment advice.

I spent much of Saturday reviewing recently released emails between FRB members during the Lehman crisis.

* There were only a few emails discussing the impact to AIG. Oddly it was asserted that AIG was MUCH less systemic than AIG. Yet they determined that Lehman only required $12 billion while they provided AIG a $60 billion dollar loan? If AIG was less systemic than Lehman why did they bail either out?

* Some emails were a brainstorm to find ANYTHING the Fed could do without reporting to Congress that could be done to "spike" the markets. They wanted to do something in that respect with the GSEs and the FHLBs, but due to a recent limit put on an explicit guarantee given to the GSEs of $100 billion, decided they would be humiliated to announce a much larger support to Fannie and Freddie only a few days after the announced "explicit" support that was to be limited to $100 billion.

* They spent at least 3 months in discussions doing absolutely nothing before going into crisis mode. Early in the last few days Paulson decided there would be absolutely no government backstop to Lehman.

* The first few emails indicated the FED was sure Lehman was gaming their discount window. Their collateral, according to the FED, was absolute junk. They were in the belief that Lehman "purchased" a higher rating than their collateral deserved.

* A few emails questioned why Lehman marked the full value for assets on their own books that were wholly securitized. These assets should not be marked at any value on Lehman books!

* Even though everyone at Lehman knew their leverage was 35 to one, that level was not mentioned in any of the emails. The Fed used 15 to one. In their final investor conference call Lehman claimed to have reduced their leverage from "12 to one" to "10.2 to one"(??). They made additional blatant lies in their conference call the SEC knew to be untrue, yet the SEC never took any action against the Lehman executives making the lies.

* All of the big banks had already removed most of their cash and other positions from Lehman before it was put into bankruptcy. The majority of losses directly due to the failure of Lehman was to hedge funds, not to the big banks.

* Deutsche reports having no positive position at Lehman. Their position was simply listed as Zero. Most likely Deutsche was severely "short". They were, however, their biggest CDO counter party.

* Losses at Lehman due to equity positions, by comparison to other losses, was negligible. Almost all of their losses could be attributed to MBS holdings.

Having watched the trailer it strikes me as very odd that none of the actors in the film seem to "get it". They appear to be under the belief that the great depression of 2014..2045 was avoided due to actions taken by Paulson and Geithner; when the opposite is true. The Great Depression of 2014..2045 was caused by their actions, NOT avoided by them.

When the world needed Glass Steagall to separate corrupt investment banks from sound banks of deposit instead Glass Steagall was torn down.

When the world needed reduced leverage, instead leverage was dramatically increased due to lobbying by Hank Paulson. When the world needed Too Big To Fail investment banks to be broken down into smaller pieces by a Wilbur Ross or JC Flowers type character instead it was given Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner. Characters, who instead of breaking the banks into smaller pieces to save the good parts, put bad mutiple parts together to make a "more likely", and "Bigger To Fail" bank. When the world needed characters to mend America, instead they had characters who spread their "Wall Street" disease to the rest of the globe, causing worldwide hunger and poverty!

The result - an immense loss of wealth and jobs. Their reverse Robin Hood policies took what little cash the lower class had to line the pockets of banks and bankers; while transferring worthless TOXIC collateral from the banks to trusts - held on behalf of the lower class! Collateral that's not just worth less, but that has a "negative" value due to maintenance and holding costs!

Those who had jobs were put on furloughs to help line the pockets of wealthy bankers.

The middle class became the lower class.

The upper 1% grew wealthier by gaming "TALF".

Bankers lined their pockets at the expense of the poor and games of "Quantitative Easing".

Lending came to a complete standstill.

Pension funds were devoured by ZIRP;

The number of Americans on food stamps increased dramatically.

Home values decreased.

Americans underwater given mortgages they could not afford were foreclosed upon and tossed into the streets. Loans given by lenders knowing the borrowers could never afford. Loans given by the alchemy of securitization that would turn bags of dust into gold. Bags revealed to hold only common dust rather than sparkling gold once opened.

Irresponsible levels of "quantitative easing" devalued the American Dollar and caused global inflation.


The American Dream became the American Nightmare.

... Gaming the PDCF

... Repo Lines

Near End Game

Lehman Collateral

****... this effing movie is far too kind to Bernanke, Paulson and the rest of criminals

Disney couldn't have made a more cartoonified version of 2008 events if they tried...

I couldn't take anymore and stopped watching...

Bummer :(

I saw it.....too much of the "insiders" movie. One can gain little understanding as to how this could be prevented in the future. Funny moments: English are presented as without a clue, Koreans as arrogant, and Japanese as smoke-addicted, but reliable deal makers.

One interesting point that I was not aware of: Paulson called Buffet to get advice on how to make banks, even so called "healthy" ones, to accept TARP money in form of preferred shares.

Disagree

Thought it was fair. Bankers looked inept, greedy, and clueless. The movie did a nice job showing how vulnerable they all were.

Me Likey.

Pat

Couldn't agree more on Goldman.

The way I see things playing out it looks like GS will be the fall guy for the housing mess.

So Paulson was the movies set-up hero? I'm seeing this on Twitter.

The problem with the movie is the story is basically being told from a villain's point of view (namely, Paulson) and from a bad guy's point of view, he isn't a bad guy. That said, for anyone who paid attention, it was a bit of backhanded compliments toward Paulson.

- In the initial montage of news footage, which basically tried to sum up every event from Reagan to Bear Sterns in about a minute, there's a CNBC clip of Erin Burnette saying that "too big to fail" was created by the very same deregulation policies that Paulson pushed for when he was head at Goldman

- there actually is a joke made in reference to everyone in treasury being from Goldman Sachs (even use the word "Government Sachs")

- even though most of the film deals with the meeting with all the execs to save Lehman, it's mentioned in passing the belief that Lehman was allowed to fail (or little effort was put into saving it) because they were Goldman Sachs' biggest competitor

- Michele Davis says something to the effect of, "what do I tell people when I'm asked why AIG wasn't regulated?" and no one really answers her. Then later after the banks are forced to accept the capital injections, she criticizes the fact they were given $125B each without sanction. (On the flip side, it was made to appear TARP contained no sanctions because the banks wouldn't accept it otherwise. I have no doubt it was really just Paulson giving his friends a free ride.)

- the scene of Paulson's dinner at the Beijing Olympics basically showed the Chinese have us by the balls and the bailouts came out partially out of fear they'd pull the rug from under us

It was far from perfect and unfortunately under the impression disaster was averted, but I wouldn't call it a historical re-write.

And, as always, James Woods is amazing playing the *******.