The film is well-crafted and well-detailed, explaining how complex financial instruments work in easy-to-understand language. The personalities of various U.S. government officials and various Wall Street giants, as well as the business operation characteristics of various Wall Street companies, are particularly incisive. It is particularly worth mentioning that the self-righteousness and arrogance of the president of Lehman Brothers, the collapse of Lehman was almost caused by his own blind optimism and misjudgment of the situation, which led Lehman to miss the best period of best measures. The funny thing is that the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission is incompetent in dealing with the crisis, and his undergraduate degree from Southern California + a master's degree from Harvard Business School + a Ph.D. from Harvard Law School can't teach him how to communicate with the Secretary of the Treasury and the President of Lehman Brothers In the end, he completely obeyed Hank Paulson's instructions and did not have his own ideas and countermeasures. His appearance is not like the attitude of a leader who should turn the tide in a crisis, but more like the appearance of a child spoiled by a high-scoring and low-ability family under the Chinese education system entering society for the first time. Ironically, Hank Paulson, the former president of Goldman Sachs Group and Treasury secretary during the crisis, was essentially paying for his previous actions. "Use the smartest criminals to solve the hardest criminal problems", and the bells need to be answered. It is empathetic that Paulson was in a high position, because he was worried that the crisis could not be handled well and could not sleep at night, and because of his religious beliefs, he refused to take sleeping pills. The torment of lack of sleep on the mind and body and the need to stay clear-headed to deal with dire situations is a true reflection of the mental state of everyone on Wall Street every day. Behind the esteemed identities and the glamorous appearance of Wall Streeters is often an unknown work day and night.
AIG's Statement to the Media on Emergency Funding Assistance
Wall Street started bundling home loans together, mortgage-backed securities, and selling slices of those bundles to investors. And they were making big money. So they started pushing the lenders, saying, “come on, we need more loans.” The lenders had already given loans to borrowers with good credit, so they go bottom-feeding. They lower their criteria. Before, you needed a credit score of 620 and a down payment of 20%. Now, they'll settle for 500, no money down. And the buyer, the regular guy on the street, assumes that the experts know what they are doing. He's saying to himself, "if the bank's willing to loan me money, I must be able to afford it." So he reaches for the American dream. He buys that house. The bank knew securities based on shitbag mortgages were risky. So to control their downside, the banks started buying a kind of insurance. If mortgages default,insurance company pays, default swap. The banks insure their potential losses to move the risk off their books, so they can invest more, make more money. And while a lot of companies insured this stuff, one was dumb enough to take on an almost unbelievable amount of risk. AIG did that for hundreds of millions in fees. AIG figured the housing market would just keep going up, but then the unexpected happens. Housing prices go down. The poor bastard who bought his dream house, the teaser rate on his mortgage runs out. His payments go up. He defaults. Mortgage-backed securities tank. AIG has to pay off the swaps, all of them, all over the world, at the same time. AIG can't pay. AIG goes under .Every bank they insure books massive losses on the same day.And then they all go under. The whole financial system comes down.No one wanted to regulate it before because the economic was just too good.
On the collapse of the trust system
There's not a bank in the world that has enough money in its vault to pay its depositors. It's all built on trust. Morgan Stanley, Goldman are an inch away. If the other banks stop trusting them, if they pull back on interbank lending, it's over in a matter of hours. And from there it goes too fast to stop a run and not just on that one bank. I mean, on the whole system. And average people wondering, "is my money safe?" They start pulling their cash. And after that lines outside the banks, smashed ATMs A couple of weeks, there’s no milk in the store.
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