The English title of "Storm of Interest" is "Margin Call", which is a term in terms of financial futures. When buying and selling financial derivative products, investors usually do not need to pay the full amount of the transaction product. For example, investors can use five yuan Buying a twenty yuan financial product is a leveraged operation of magnification. At this time, if the price of the commodity rises to 22 yuan, investors can earn as much as 40% (2 yuan / 5 yuan), but the risk of loss is also extremely high. In order to ensure the rights and interests of traders, they will set a margin for this kind of leveraged investment offline. When the loss reaches this limit, investors must call for the margin, otherwise the investment will be liquidated. For example, when the price of a financial product drops to 18 yuan, the investor's original investment of 5 yuan will be left at 3 yuan. At this time, the dealer will issue a "margin call" to the investor, asking the investor to make up the margin to 5 yuan. . If investors cannot make up in time, the remaining three yuan may be forced to liquidate, thus losing money.
"The Storm of Interests" tells the story of a small employee of an investment bank who suddenly calculated that the company will face the risk of bankruptcy once the market drops rapidly because the investment amount exceeds the estimate. After notifying the relevant leaders, the company had to work out a countermeasure before the next day, and decide whether to sell all the investment products in its hands in the morning of the next day. The dilemma facing the company at this moment is that if it does not sell immediately, the news will inevitably spread. By then, the company's stock price and those investment products will become worthless, and the company can only be forced to accept the fate of bankruptcy. However, once a large number of those investment products are sold, although the company can escape the risk of bankruptcy, it will put the entire market in danger of crashing, and those who buy these investment products without knowing it will suffer huge losses. The credibility of the company will also be burned. In this case, people at all levels in the interior are forced to choose the way they face it and make a decision between their conscience and their future based on their respective positions and considerations.
The content of the film is not directly related to the financial operation of "margin call". The English film title takes the extended meaning behind the term, that is, the company and each related person in the film are exposed to great risks and have already suffered. A huge loss. Faced with such a situation, the parties must choose to invest more, give it a go, or just admit compensation. In terms of screenwriting and film style, "Storm of Benefits" is a typical American commercial film. Everything is short and quick. The characters and dialogue are superficial and direct. The issues and situations are simplified and condensed. The situation presented in the film is completely in line with the situation. , It can even be said to be excessive conformity. The current understanding and impression of Wall Street: greed, selfishness and shamelessness. In all fairness, the artistic level of this film is not high, but the human characteristics and conflict situations pointed out in it are extremely interesting and worthy of consideration and analysis.
■When mentioning the US subprime debt storm, most people will think of the words "Wall Street's greed", thinking that it is those shameless financial staff on Wall Street who deliberately used various complex derivatives to make money. The packaging of the product is incomprehensible, and then knowing that the product in hand is actually a pile of rubbish, but deliberately deceived ignorant investors to make them pay for it. Finally, all financial institutions and financial personnel work together to put the money earned in their pockets and throw huge losses on the country and all the people to bear.
This understanding cannot be said to be completely wrong, but it is not completely correct. Take Lehman Brothers, which is alluded to in the film, for this investment bank with a history of 158 years and was established before the invention of the electric light. "Fortune" magazine ranked first in the "most envied company". The main reason why it will go bankrupt on September 15, 2008 is mainly due to borrowing too much money to invest (excessive leverage) and hands I took too many subprime bonds and subprime loans. The reason why this company boldly borrowed so much money and took so many grade bonds and subprime loans is that they believe that this is a "good thing" with low risk and more money, not a pile of rubbish.
Subprime bonds are financial products made with subprime loans as collateral. The so-called subprime loans refer to housing loans for those with lower incomes and poor credit. These poorer people, It is not possible to apply for loans in general banks, and the US government hopes to help these poor people buy houses, so it supports some state-run institutions to do this business, and through "packing loans as collateral, issuing bonds to sell Investors, to raise the necessary loan funds." Therefore, both subprime loans and subprime bonds are not rubbish in terms of original intention and design. The reason why ordinary investors are willing to buy subprime bonds and subprime loans is that although they are relatively risky, they also provide relatively high yields. In addition, the participation of state-owned institutions and corresponding financial insurance companies and rating companies also provides a good security guarantee for these financial products.
One reason why subprime bonds and subprime loans would go wrong was that the scale was over-expanded, and the other was that the risks were ignored by every link in the process of diversification, but they accumulated rapidly as a whole. Since commercial banks transfer subordinated loans to investment banks to make subordinated bonds, they do not actually hold loans or bonds in the process, and they earn the intermediate profit margin. Therefore, the more people who apply for loans, the more The larger the loan amount, the greater the profit of the commercial bank. As a result, they are increasingly relaxing the review of lenders' qualifications, and they have also taken the initiative to propose various preferential measures to attract all kinds of people to apply for loans.
After the investment banks get the subprime loans, they package them into subprime bonds and resell them to investors such as hedge funds, so their risk is not high. Because these subordinated bonds have a corresponding guarantee mechanism behind them, they have received very high ratings from rating agencies. Therefore, after the hedge funds have obtained the subordinated bonds, they can use the bank to mortgage and borrow money, and the borrowed money can be used again. Buying subordinated bonds and then collateralizing... As a result, the leverage has been magnified layer by layer. What was originally just a good investment income, instantly turned into a "huge amount" of investment income. At the same time, the entire subprime bond market was blown up like a balloon.
Seeing that investors such as hedge funds make large profits from subordinated bonds, commercial banks and investment banks, which were originally intermediary agencies, couldn’t help but began to invest in overseas markets, and in order to circumvent the corresponding capital adequacy restrictions, many Financial institutions make subordinated debt investments into off-balance sheet businesses. As a result, when the scale of subordinated bonds expanded rapidly, the true scale was hidden, and the yield of subordinated bonds not only did not increase with the accumulation of risks, but fell because of the increase in demand. At first glance, this is completely a game played by Wall Street financial institutions themselves, but in fact, this is a feast for the whole people, and even a feast for the whole world.
After experiencing the Asian financial turmoil, the high-tech bubble, and the 9/11 incident, the US Federal Reserve has injected a lot of liquidity into the market, and in order to revitalize the economy, it has encouraged ordinary people to buy houses. As a result, a huge real estate bubble was blown out, housing prices continued to soar, and people with money and no money all invested in real estate. It is the environment of low interest rates, the strong demand for real estate and the crazy surge in housing prices that have contributed to the accelerated growth of subprime debt, and the accelerated growth of subprime debt has turned back to stimulate the growth of the real estate market. To the domestic and foreign investors who buy sub-prime debt, people and companies in every link have made a lot of money, and a small balloon has been blown into the size of a house. It's just that no matter how good a balloon made of rubber, it can't bear to blow so lifelessly.
■The origin of the subprime debt problem in "Benefits Storm" did not overly criticize the management of Lehman Brothers, which was alluded to in the film. The film did not indicate that the company deliberately carried out such a large-scale operation, knowing that the investment products have huge risks. It is believed that the initial reasons for the problem are: (1) The risk of sub-prime debt is difficult to accurately measure, especially in the process of diversification; (2) Investment banks are too complex and corresponding The accounting process is too complicated, so it is difficult to control the company’s overall investment and risk status in a timely manner.
Therefore, the film focuses more on the company's handling methods and attitudes after the company discovers the problem: the company shareholders know that the market is about to plummet, and they also provide high bonuses to encourage employees to sell their investment products to unsuspecting investors; With high bonuses, bonuses and pensions, and in order to prevent the company from going bankrupt, one after another tricked investors into buying these worthless investment products. During the entire discussion and decision process, some company executives also expressed disagreement with this detrimental approach, believing that doing so would not only severely damage the company’s future reputation in the market, but also implicate all company employees and harm the company’s employees. They cannot gain a foothold in the market.
In the meantime, it is worth controversial whether a company should put its credibility first when facing the dilemma of bankruptcy or bankruptcy? Employees’ wealth is tied to the company. When facing unemployment and the dilemma of having nothing, should the professional ethics of customers be the most important thing? From the point of view of right and wrong, obviously the answer should be "right", but from the point of view of human nature, "people are not for themselves, and heaven is extinguished", the answer is undoubtedly "wrong". Because of this, the perception of this movie is easy to form a polarized situation. The average person thinks that the company and its employees are very shameless. However, as a financial officer, it is easier to agree with the disposal method. After all, their customers Those investors who decide to buy products from them are not based on morality, but believe that the investment is profitable and want to take advantage of the sale.
In addition to these two contradictory issues of human nature and morality, the film also raises another issue, that is, is it reasonable for Wall Street financial staff to receive high salaries? Correspondingly, the film puts forward the employment environment of financial personnel: When the company's profits decline and the market deteriorates, cruel and unrelenting layoffs will fall on these people at any time, regardless of the past. How much money is made for the company and how much credit is given. At present, the biggest opinion American people have on Wall Street is that they have received high salaries and bonuses. They feel that their contributions are not proportional to their income, and that this high income is what drives these people to boldly enter and sell their morals. power.
In fact, the so-called "reasonable income" does not have an objective and absolute measurement standard. As far as capitalist society is concerned, the simplest and objective way to measure is how much profit an employee brings to the company. Just imagine, if you, as an Ang Gong, make 10 million yuan in profits for the company a year, but the company only pays you an annual salary of 100,000 yuan, can you accept it? Will you stay in this company? Without a comparable salary level, when the market is good, it is natural that talents cannot be retained. The high bonuses will indeed encourage employees to enter the market rashly, but how can low bonuses not encourage employees to be lazy?
In addition, many people criticize Wall Street people for wearing famous brands, staying in five-star hotels, and flying in business class, but they rarely think about how many investors would believe that they are experts in investment if they are dressed in shabby clothes and are shabby. , Can you safely hand over the money to them? I still remember that when the subprime debt storm broke out, everyone was in panic all day long, fearing that companies would collapse on a large scale, they all counted on the US government to come up with a solution, and blamed the US government for acting too slowly and lightly. Now that the times have changed, they have turned around again, blaming that the problems are all caused by the rich on Wall Street, and the US government has been controlled by the rich on Wall Street and used the people’s money to help them. All of these are examples of people who are less likely to be objective and balanced under the anger and passion, and "Storm of Interest" tries to express this contradiction in a more subtle way.
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