Only one more day to watch on Netflix. “Margin Call” is a fictional tale at the beginning of the mortgage debt crisis of 2008 and happens over a span of 24 hours. Loosely based on true events (but not like “The Big Short”, which closely followed true events), a story about a fictional trading house that discovers it is about to be taken under by excess leverage in mortgage backed securities it has not moved off to other customers fast enough.
Very interesting story and very well done film. Highly recommended, but watch fast. Its almost gone from Netflix.
Perhaps my favorite line: “There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat.” And then he tries to be first at off-loading all that toxic debt they had, in a single day, by only selling and never buying, anything, that next trading day. And getting it all done before their buyers are aware of what is happening. Which, of course, is getting close to crossing the line into cheating. ;). After all, they knew they were selling worthless, toxic junk.
It was very interesting to see the back-and-forth arguing about what should be done between various layers of management from the manager of the traders all the way up to the CEO. “This will ruin our careers if we do this”. “There is no alternative”. I’ve seen it three times now and I still love the movie.
Yes, I enjoyed it (for the second time, thanks for the tip that it was leaving.)
My only complaint is the repetition of “explain it to me like I’m in kindergarten.” Once would have been enough to allow the audience in, the second time, from an even more senior executive who certainly should understand the business he sits atop, was lazy writing. Yes, sometimes these ‘backstory’ explanations are over-simplified to give the audience some background, but twice?
And, of course, there were no car crashes or aliens. But otherwise, not bad.
When Will left his underling in the Aston on the street and said “don’t push any buttons” would have been the perfect time for a roll-away-down-the-hill accident into a city bus.
