Trailer: Too Big to Fail
Tonight is the premiere of Too Big to Fail, the story of our near-financial disaster in 2008. The film airs on HBO at 9 pm and is billed as the definitive story of what really happened during this crisis. It should provide interesting discussion as we watch the financial status of not only our nation, but our own personal wealth hover on the brink of disaster. It does open the vault on the financial crisis we so nearly avoided.
More about tonight’s film:
Should Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns have been rescued? Should everyone in financial trouble have been allowed to fail? What would the repercussions from that be?
Am I the only one who watched? I thought it was excellent and scary. What happened what pretty much what I had been told.
sigh, no HBO for me, I canceled after Soprano’s was done. Too many repeats and not enough new programming for me to justify the cost.
Is it going to be repeated?
Has anyone ever investigated who exactly it was that was making a run on the money markets and instigated the initial crash? Because that kind of withdrawal is not a normal part of business. That was an attack or an attempt to influence politics.
@Pat, they are running specials now….3 months for free.
@George
Its on ON DEMAND starting today. I thought it was good but intense. You had to pay attention to who people were. I liked Paulson and Buffett even more after it. I think Paulson saved our bacon.
More could have been done to emphasize why doing things or not doing them was critical. The film assumed people knew more than they did, I thought.
I still ended up being mad at Mr. Howler at the end. He kept talking about people being irresponsible. He didn’t seem to move past that, which after the film, seemed irrelevant. He hovered on an event rather than the complexity.
Cargo,
people panic and want their money, don’t you think? I need to rewatch. It was a lot to absorb in one setting.
Pat, I’m still addicted to HBO. “Treme”, “Bored to Death”, and “The Ricky Gervais Show” have me hooked, and a lot of people like “True Blood”, “Boardwalk Empire”, and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” which I also watch. They definitely still have plenty of original programming. Oh, I almost forgot “In Treatment” which I think is awesome.
I watched a few minutes of this special last night during commercials in the Thunder/Mavs game – it looked a bit ridiculous. Glorifying the bloated sense of self-importance that these people feel in making the hardly-complex decision to borrow from future generations to bail everyone out. Guess I’ll watch some more of it.
@Rick, I never started watching those others. I am watching Game of Thrones and so far I think I am missing something. I get more out of Camelot.
I don’t think you can approach Too Big from the point of view that they are just people with a bloated sense of self importance. They controlled it all. And they almost lost it all. There are a few heroes in there. What if no one had been there. What would our world look like now had they not have been?
You iPadders need to check this out: http://www.hbogo.com/
I don’t accept that they are heros. All that they effected, IMO, is the transfer of wealth from the rest of us to the wealthy.
Our world would look better had that transfer not happened.
I wish I could see this but we don’t have HBO. Even though this film appears to be something I would enjoy, I don’t think HBO is worth the money. Also, HBO shows too much soft-core porn that we don’t want the kids to have access to.
I watched the videos posted here. Paul Giammatti looks just like Bernake – he could probably slip into the Fed building downtown if he wanted. Moon referred to Paulson and Buffett. Don’t forget Bernake. He was absolutely correct that inaction would have put us in a situation far worse than the Great Depression was. We are very fortunate to have a Fed Chair who understands both the relevant economics as well as the history.
The crisis is a ticking bomb. I was very disappointed with the financial regulation reform (Dodd-Frank). It did not go nearly far enough. The clip refered to the deregulation of commercial and investment banking during the Clinton Administration. That was the Gramm-Leach- Bliley Act (GLB), one of the worst pieces of legislation in our country’s history. President Clinton supported it wholeheartedly also. It effectively repealed Glass-Steagal, which was the legislation from the 30s that had broken them apart, among other things. How soon we forget. GLB is a classic example of too much money in politics buying influence that results in disaster for most people. Shades of developers and the PWC Board of Supervisors, much on a much larger scale.
In fact, Dodd-Frank did virtually nothing to correct the situation that led to the crisis, and the banks are back to their old ways of doing business already. Most of these people would not be as blind as Dick Fuld and watch their billion diminish to 50k. They would manipulate the system to gain as much as possible and then cash in when the problems were on the doorstep as regular people loose their jobs and homes. Oh, but that’s what did happen. Part two coming to your neighborhood soon because of the power of campaign contributions and the lack of guts on the part of our elected officials. Was I talking about Washington and the financial industry or PWC and the developers? Guess it doesn’t matter. All the same.
Sorry for the spelling error – Bernanke
+1 – NtK
@Cato, great, isnt it!!!
@Rick Bentley
I certainly don’t think that all are heroes. I would not like to see this country in a depression. I would expect rioting in the streets and people shooting each other.
@Moon-howler
Not that. It was ONE account, withdrawing BILLIONS, that started the dominos…
in a related item, from Free Republic:
n July 2008 “Indymac bank was seized by the Federal government, after Senator Charles Schumer’s (D-NY) (on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee), warnings of IndyMac’s vulnerability resulted in something of a bank run.”
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27505
IndyMac was purchased in 3/09, for 1.2 Billion, by Soros and Partners, and renamed OneWest.
http://bailout.propublica.org/entities/741-onewest-bank
The assests of Indymac were reported at $32.01 billion (at time of government seizure by FDIC). I can’t find any reporting of the sales and bidding process that took place to purchase the seized Indymac?
“The New York Times said the deal is unusual because if completed it would be one of the FIRST CASES of a private equity firm buying a bank holding company. The Federal Reserve eased regulations in September (how convenient), said the Times, to allow private equity firms and hedge funds to acquire portions of bank holding companies without falling under certain regulations.”
New regulations eliminate private holding company’s restrictions from making investments outside the banking industry.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/private-investors-close-to-indymac-purchase-reports
A few months after the OneWest purchase, the bank has been allocated 2.2 Billion in Tarp funds.
http://bailout.propublica.org/entities/741-onewest-bank
Soros and partners got their hands on Indymac, with sweetheart deals(loss sharing agreements) and have subsequently been provided with more government seized assets, along with more government “sweetheart deals”, which doubled the OneWest banks branches in less than a year.
The original “sweetheart deal”:
“What is overlooked although reported on the FDIC website is the sweetheart deals they make to banks they to takeover “failed” ones.
A classic is OneWest Bank which took over IndyMac Bank in March 2009. OneWest purchased all current residential mortgages at 70% par value. FDIC guaranteed anywhere from 80-95% from any losses OneWest might occur based on the original outstanding loan balance.
For example, if a home has a loan amount of $500,000, One West would pay $350,000. If the owner is offered $250,000 cash in a “short sale,” OneWest can report a $250,000 loss based on the original loan and receive a check from Uncle Sam for $200,000. Add that to the $250,000 “short sale” price offer and OneWest earns a grand total of $450,000 and a nifty 100 grand profit.”
http://bailout.propublica.org/entities/741-onewest-bank
The internet a buzzing with home owners complaining about OneWest banks.
http://iamfacingforeclosure.com/blog/category/indymaconewest/
Also, the FED said that we didn’t have a right to know who was “running the bank” when other banks were taking out billions in loans: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/business/03gret.html
I know, I know, completely forgot about moderation…too many links.
Here’s two more explaining the crash:
http://septembercrisishoax.wordpress.com/
http://useconomy.about.com/od/criticalssues/a/bailout_cause.htm
Maybe CATO can make sense of it all.
@NTK
You are right. I did leave out Bernanke accidentally and I certainly believe he is a hero along with Paulson and Buffett.
As you know, I am a big supporter of TARP. I think we HAD to do it.
HBO, its all what you want to blow your money on. I love HBO and you can get free months if you call your provider. I like certain shows and to me, it is worth $20 a month to me to get to see movies and the series like Big Love and Boardwalk. Cheaper than a movie ticket, popcorn and a drink. There are also child-proofing methods associated with each provider. Mine isn’t activated now. The 16 year old is beyond hope and I can see what the little ones are watching. I should have it on netflix because the kindergarten one likes to watch movies. She is good about telling me things aren’t appropriate for her. Its funny. I have the ipad set to kids on netflix.
You are right though. the premium channels to have some fairly racy scenes on them. I think the worst was The Tudors. Holy cow. I don’t know how to say this politely. They were LOUD.
@Moon-howler
Wait, you like Game of Thrones but you’re complaining about the sex scenes in The Tudors?
Some of the scenes in Game of Thrones look like they belong on one of those DVDs they sell in the back room of KK’s. Not that I would know anything about that.
@Cato, I wasn’t complaining, just commenting. Thrones has quieter sex. The Tudors could be heard all over the castle. I still think the Tudors were more explicit.
Is this a fight over who has the best sex? HBO or Showtime?
@Moon-howler
It’s good to be the king.
@Moon-howler
Oh come now. GoT isn’t that bad. I mean by episode 3 or 4 a woman is finally allowed to be face to face with a man during the deed. 😉
I love the show. I didn’t catch Too Big to Fail as I wasn’t a fan of TARP and I think it was just another moral hazard that let the top 1% keep the money that they could’ve lost fairly (along with everyone else) but I guess when you make an omlette….
I watched most of this, it was a thoughtful movie.