1. Supervision missing.
2. Wall Street greed, unreasonably high pay.
3. Paulson first let Lehman go bankrupt and then rescued AIG and injected capital into the bank is tricky.
4. Obama's financial team is still the same group of people engaged in the financial crisis.
5. Conflicts of interest between rating agencies and academics and the financial industry.
Very clearly left wing view. There is no conclusion to the dispute on point 1. There is even a view that “too much supervision” has led to the financial crisis. The core is that the Federal Reserve’s statutory interest rate has distorted the market, causing overheating and bubbles. The interest rate should be determined by the market, plus The U.S. government gave the two houses the bottom line, making lenders more unscrupulous. Points 2 and 5 are clichés, and I've already touched on this in my review of "Steal Yourself".
The remaining points 3 and 4 are essentially a question: Are the people at the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve really good birds? On this first point, the rivalry is given by New York Times columnist Sorkin's bestselling book "Too big to fail" (meaning too big to fail) and its adaptation of the film of the same name. From the collapse of Lehman Brothers to the 700 billion bailout plan, the financial team with the Bush administration's Treasury Secretary Paulson as the core made decisions and tried to save the financial crisis. I don't know how much documentary and how much jokes there are, but at least the plot is interlocking, the logic is self-consistent, and it is quite convincing. After all, the financial crisis itself does neither Wall Street nor the authorities good.
This article does not count as a movie review. Because the plot in the film is compact and involves a lot of professional details, this article is more like a detailed plot deduction to help you understand. So let's take a look at how this crisis has evolved from the authorities' point of view:
Troubled Lehman Brothers is asking for help, Paulson has helped connect Buffett, and Lehman CEO Dick Fuld says Buffett's big talk and doesn't agree because there are potential buyers South Korea, Bank of America, and the U.K. of Barclays. It won't be long before he regrets what a bad decision it was.
The Federal Reserve provided a $30 billion guarantee for JPMorgan Chase to acquire Bear Stearns, and later Freddie Mac and Fan Lomo were in trouble. investment interests, the authorities nationalized the two houses. Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke (equivalent to the US central bank governor) and New York Fed President Geithner, in order to avoid leaving the impression that the authorities will take over everything, decided not to directly contribute to Lehman, and only be responsible for urging and coordinating others. Institutional acquisition or assistance to Lehman. Paulson even summoned the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch to ask them to rescue Lehman.
And Fuld took the Koreans as fools and wanted them to buy the non-performing loans of real estate loans, and ruined the business with the Koreans. Merrill Lynch preemptively completed the merger with Bank of America. At the last minute, the British regulators rejected Barclays' application to acquire Lehman. Paulson asked the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission) chairman to suggest that Lehman would file for bankruptcy. The reason for this is to avoid the impression of "buying Wall Street's bills with taxpayer money", while "Stealing Yourself" speculates that this is the investor who dumped the burden and harmed Lehman. The panic caused by the bankruptcy of Lehman is indeed huge, and the only remaining investment banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are facing huge withdrawal and short pressure. At this time, AIG, which was over-insured for subprime mortgages, was on the brink of desperation. As the largest insurance company in the United States, AIG contained countless assets such as pensions, and it was too big to fail. At the same time, the market panic made credit stagnant, and even the traditional financial health GE is facing difficulties in raising capital, which has led to a tense international reaction.
Paulson and Bernanke begged for a threat to get Congress to approve a three-page budget of $700 billion to buy toxic bank assets, but was ultimately rejected by the House of Representatives. For the two major investment banks on the brink of bankruptcy, Geithner let them merge with commercial banks and turn them into commercial banking companies, although this would make these investment banks no longer intermediaries and become conglomerates. But JPMorgan Chase refused to buy Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup refused to buy Goldman Sachs. Morgan Stanley found Japan's Mitsubishi on its own, and Goldman Sachs got Buffett's money.
But this did not solve the market panic and credit stagnation. At the same time, Paulson's team found that the purchase of toxic assets was too slow to solve the credit stagnation problem, so the only solution left was to inject capital directly into the bank, allowing the bank to quickly lend the money. Go out to activate the credit market. Because this has the suspicion of "nationalization", it should be avoided as much as possible, but there is no way at this time. Under pressure from the White House, Congress passed the capital injection, but Paulson had to convince banks to accept the bailout money. To avoid having the rescued banks be seen as imminent, Paulson demanded that all nine major banks receive capital injections, regardless of their financial condition. Banks fear the authorities will control their operations by injecting capital and buying shares, or even capping their salaries. In order to appease them, Paulson promised that the shares purchased by the authorities would have no voting rights, and joined the FDIC (American Deposit Insurance Corporation).
Finally, a plan has been implemented, the credit market has been revived, and the major banks have repaid the federal government's capital injection soon.
This is the financial crisis from the perspective of "Too Big to Fail". It seems that Paulson and Geithner and others did their best here, and it also explains why Lehman went bankrupt and then rescued other banks ("Steal Yourself"). ” question 3). And senior politicians such as Bush, Obama, McCain are just ambassadors who can only say a few simple truths, which is why Obama still has to use Geithner as Treasury Secretary (Question No. 4 of "Steal Yourself" ) because only these people are professional and experienced, and Geithner has done a great job in this crisis.
The logic of the story is self-consistent and in line with the interests and motivations of all parties. In all fairness, as a TV movie, "Too Big to Fail" has a limited artistic level, and the performances of a group of TV actors are slightly exaggerated, full of TV drama. But as a documentary film, it competently and compactly reflects the process of the government's bailout in the original book on the screen, and can be enjoyed as a sequel to "The Big Short" to gain a more complete understanding of this not-so-distant history.
Related film reviews:
"Guarding Yourself"--The literary and art world is besieging Wall Street, I'm here to wash the ground for Wall Street (reasonably)
"The Big Short"--I will tell you how good the movie is first, and then you will ask and I will answer
the WeChat public account of the crisis: Fat Dudu watching a movie (feidudumovie)
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