Yes, Mark Baum (as portrayed by Steve Carell) embodies the vocal "moral" conscience in the movie who decries the inevitable: small-scale investors, consumers, the under-privileged getting the shaft. However, Baum and his colleagues (SPOILER ALERT) make, in sum, a billion dollars from anticipating/betting on the devaluation of subprime bonds. Other savvy foretellers also rationalize their profits or learn the price many Americans will pay for banks' corrupt lending practices. These men, however, will become very rich.*
And that's the rub. (SPOILER ALERT) Two inexperienced men, the "little" guys in the film, bet their life savings that the market will crash. They win, but do they? [Will they learn from being lectured by Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt)?] If wrong, the amateurs would have been forced to sell their few remaining assets and potentially be impoverished or underemployed for years to come, all of which would cost the average taxpayer (by taking away economic stimulus and increasing the price of debt).
I confess, these issues were a bone of contention for my boyfriend and me after we saw the movie. I surprise myself by writing that I took the more cynical position. For I believe once a person earns or receives large amounts of money, they often change. Investing is gambling. And investors allow financial institutions to use their money to garner profits. Of course, many investors didn't count on their bankers and brokers to make millions of dollars for personal profit via unethical practices and thereby sacrifice their customers' assets in the process.
Yes, the institutions, e.g. big banks, created an artificial culture encouraging, enticing people to buy homes with little or no credit, no down payments knowing that in time, with the adjustable interest rates, these consumers would never be able to pay their mortgages. Worse, brokers knowingly sold "synthetic" bonds that had no real value.
Revenge wields its ugly head in fair-minded people who want justice for the Great Recession. Bailing out banks, in particular, has inflamed the anger of even passive observers who wanted the government to let commercial banks falter. And yet, we're told to learn from history. In the 1929 market crash, banks did go bust and the Depression dragged on for almost a decade. Many who lost everything had their savings tied up in these banks and/or in the stock market. The already poor got poorer. The middle class disappeared. Sound familiar?
(SPOILER ALERT) The end of THE BIG SHORT alludes to a probable return to the very practices which brought down our economy and other economies around the world. Moreover, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and others have warned if banks, brokerages, mortgage lenders aren't closely regulated average Americans will pay the price, again. The struggling middle-class and working poor have little leverage to change the system and self-regulation only benefits the top one percent.
How can a citizen stop the impending catastrophe? VOTE for candidates, from the local level to the federal government, who support economic reform. Although it may take five minutes from your day, go on-line and use social media to express your opinions or better, become an activist to help create change.
If people can't or won't follow through with the above recommendations to act, if they continue to invest in real estate, the stock market and subprime bonds without understanding the consequences, and/or, if they walk around enraged at corrupt institutions and the government but live a life where they spend, spend, spend and don't teach their children--the future of our planet--the value of restraint, then they encourage greed.
For in the end, it's the desire to make more and more disposable income that has fueled our corrupt culture, the underpinnings of the very system many wish to change: capitalism.
*Women in THE BIG SHORT are portrayed as either being blind to or part of the corrupt institutions. However, at least one woman did see what was coming, Meredith Whitney.
Bending vs. breaking the rules is a theme in my first book: Shadowwater. For more info, go to: www.shadowwater.net
