Let me slip this clip up before the day’s posting. If you haven’t seen this film, do so. It is remarkable.
Then extrapolate.
#OccupyStealItBack? No; this is not that. Never once in history or in forecast has reform been stolen back from theft.
But reform? As necessary, and as difficult, as curing cancer.
RUSH: You know, there’s a movie you ought to go see. I like this movie so much I’ve watched it three times.
Margin Call, the movie, is meant to be based on Lehman Brothers. Jeremy Irons plays the head of the firm named John Tuld, the Lehman Brothers guy I think was Richard Fuld, F-u-l-d. To me, it was fascinating. I’ve watched it three times just because it’s good. At any rate, just everything the president said here is a lie. Everything in that sound bite we’ve played is a lie. It was the president’s cronies who took care of themselves in this mess.
It was the president’s cronies who went to Fed and went to the US Treasury and took money for themselves and bailed themselves out while your home value plummets to underwater status. Obama and his buddies didn’t do anything to protect you, and Obama’s not doing anything to protect you now. All Obama knows is he can’t run on his record, so he’s gotta try to make you think that anybody who opposes him represents the people who destroyed the country.
Well, next time you see Obama speak, you are looking at the guy who is destroying the country.
Don’t doubt me.
As much as you might hate me, don’t doubt me.
24 Replies to “Margin Call
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Haven’t seen it, but let me guess…
eevil “capitalists” steal money by “thwarting” the good government regulators?
(as opposed to something closer to the truth, which is ‘crony capitalists’ (who are not free-market capitalists at all) steal money by working hand-in-glove with government?)
WHY should I watch this?
Apparently because you haven’t, les.
And because I suggested you extrapolate.
Cryptic.
So what’s the thumbnail sketch of it then?
I haven’t seen a lot of leftist drivel, so why should I see this one?
Or is it not leftist drivel?
I really don’t care if you roll it up in a big fattie and smoke it, les, because I’m not here to give you a review of the thing while you piss up the thread.
Clear enough?
If it were leftist drivel, I don’t suspect I’d have recommended it. Let me check…yep.
But that sounds like “leftist drivel”, les.
Um, why the hostility? I’m simply asking a question.
So a movie with the usual lefty brainicacs (Demi, Spacey, Tucci, etc…) ISN’T some lefty propaganda film? It really gives a non-lefty representation of the recent financial meltdown?
That would be truly remarkable. Almost unbelievable.
And me not believing it automatically and instantly is ‘pissing up the thread’?
“But that sounds like “leftist drivel”, les.”
Better get your hearing checked then, because I am not a Lefty.
The left hates capitalism, the ‘rich’, free markets. I don’t.
But I also don’t like those who ‘pretend to be’ or ‘are portrayed as’ capitalists, who are really ‘crony capitalists’.
Just because the far-Left is wrong about so many things does not mean they are wrong about everything. Believe nothing that you read or hear without verifying it yourself. Just because it fits or your preexisting worldview or it comes from a hated source doesn’t immediately make it truth or lie.
Or, shorter, Reagan: “trust but verify”. Emphasis is on verify. And today especially, with so many deceivers abounding in our corrupting and failshitting country, I also refuse to trust anyone.
We can spend all day breaking WordPress or you can go back, start over at the top, and figure it out, les. See, somehow I just can’t see driving over to your house with a six foot whiteboard, a six of nice craft brews, and a four hour hole in my schedule helping.
So far your grasp of this thing is the inverse square of my ability (and patience) to explain it to you. Really.
…and what serr8d said. The “right’s” chronic ability to unhinge the single most centralized and rights-damaging phenomenon on the face of the earth from PRIVATE ENTERPRISE CAPITALISM! rather denies them the label ‘conservative’.
– I forget where I saw it, we cover so much in the space of a single week these days, but some analyst estimates the “junk paper” floating around worldwide in the form of multi-tiered dirivitives is probably in the neighborhood of 77 trillion. Thats 10 trillion more than the GDP of the rest of the world, sans America and China.
– As far as who/what, the trully scarry thing is that nobody, not the admoinistration, the SEC, the Fed, the treasury, nobody knows what they’re doing.
– Obama’s not leading anything, hes like everyone else, hanging on for dear life and hoping it doesn’t all come apart at the seams.
– We could only wish he had even a semblance of control.
Go read what Limbaugh said about the movie in the update link, les. Maybe you might believe JHoward would recommend “some lefty propaganda film”, but I don’t think Rush ever would.
I’m going to watch it. But then, I knew what was happening as it happened. My father, a mere real estate broker, predicted it years ago, long before Paul Krugman claims he was the first to do so (everyone in the residential mortgage business knew what was up, Krugman was late to the parade). It will be interesting to see if the film deals with the cronyism that lead to some firms being “allowed to fail” like Lehman Bros, and others were just as involved in trading worthless paper, but deemed “too big to fail” and were bailed out, and are now bigger than before, like Goldman Sachs.
You know, just about anything that comes from PW gets huge respect from me.
And most of the commenters say things that I mostly agree with, and they usually say it better than I can, so I just lurk.
So when one of the ‘all-star’ commenters posits something that is so out of my experience, I have to question it. Or does ‘trust but verify’ not apply to everyone?
Fine, if JHow and serr8d, say this particular Hollywood film is not Lefty propagands, then I guess I’ll take a leap of faith and believe them for now.
Any other PWers see this film?
Ah, now there’s an update.
Rush : ” It was the president’s cronies who took care of themselves in this mess.
It was the president’s cronies who went to Fed and went to the US Treasury and took money for themselves and bailed themselves out while your home value plummets to underwater status. ”
So…..pretty much exactly in line with what I just freaking said wrt crony capitalism. What exactly am I getting bitched at here then?
The film is, to me, remarkable for strongly alluding to the nature of bad money — which for me also resonates to the nature of global banking itself, per the link in the fifth comment.
Central money is debt, people. It’s all derivative.
But it’s also remarkable for painting runaway derative spawning as not well understood, arbitrary, and, as we know by now, too fucking big to fail every time it fails.
The characterizations and dialog in this film are also top-tier. It is a tremendous exploration into human reach versus grasp.
This is not lefty propaganda. But do extrapolate this phenomenon first across comparable firms, then into government and its whoring itself to those firms, then into national banking, and then into international banking, which is to say, single-banking.
Then ask yourself what that entity and this phenomenon does that’s fundamentally different than what any absolute authority does. And why, and by what justification, and by what cover, and lastly at what cost to you, your properties, and your rights.
– Paulson and all the cool guys, the insiders, may have taken advantge of the opportunutues but they didn’t start this mess, the DNCC/Dems/CRA/Frank did.
– They wanted votes so they ran the free house scam, knowing that by the time it all crashed and burned the elections would be over and no one would give a shit, or could do anything because they’d be in control.
– Theres a whole lot of Dems that should be in the slammer.
JH,
I’d heard good things about it. I’ll put it on the “get to eventually” list.
I’ll say this again: the credit crisis has many roots but only one big prime mover and that is excess of concentrated leverage. A dozen large financial institutions, primarily global money center banks, took advantage of the collapse of long-standing commone sense rules like Glass-Steagall to massively over-lever in a variety of real estate securities/assets.
Everything else was panic, market-wise or regulation wise.
Too Big To Fail institutions should be broken up.
– All of the above, but theres a fundemental flaw in any system that gives the government unfettered power to invest tax payer dollars and oceans of junk printed money in business conglomerates, probably set up to purposely fail so the insiders can cash in.
– When Rush says the middle class didn’t pay for any of this he’s simply full of crap. Who does he think is going to have to pay for all this debt over the long haul? How many foreclosed homes with owners under water that will lose whatever equity they may have had?
– The housing scam did not just punish the freepers, it pulled the whole market down, including a hell of a lot of legitamate owners.
The idea of a debt based economy seems sketchy enough, trying to run a debt based economy when no one respects debt is just fucking insane.
I’ve seen it and think it’s very good. The central description of the Lehman collapse tracks with Reckless Endangerment.
Speaking of films, I was dragged kicking & screaming to ‘Dark Knight Rises’ at our IMAX last Thursday. Enjoyed it tremendously!
Always good to see the police kicking the shit out of the #Occupy ‘tards… )
BBH,
That’s not at all what he’s talking about. Go read what he said. He’s not referring to the bailout and government debt, he’s talking about who took it in the shorts when the mortgage-backed securities collapsed. Everybody lost in the debacle, but Obama was claiming it was the poor and middle class who suffered, not the rich. Yet it was the wealthy investors actually holding that worthless paper who lost the most by far.
I find it amusing the think about junk paper that is “worth 77 trillion,” because we all know it isn’t. It may have sold for that much, but it sure isn’t worth that now.
My guess is that a good chunk of the market is worthless.