The sound of Sam's digging at the end of the film did not come abruptly with the end of the film; what he buried was not only the dog to accompany him, but also all the other rules left by the old Morgans besides making money, as well as his entry in the past. The original intention of Wall Street.
Margin Call is one of my favorite Wall Street movies. Excluding Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, this independently produced film is the most successful film in my opinion in portraying Wall Street characters.
Based on Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers, the film describes the vicissitudes that an old Wall Street store experienced during the 24 hours before the subprime mortgage crisis broke out. In the beginning, due to the sluggish capital market, the company hired external HR consultants to be responsible for large-scale internal layoffs. One morning, a wave of layoffs hit the trading team in charge of MBS. In this seemingly normal and reasonable plot, the film's torture of Wall Street has begun. Who was the first cut to the layoffs? Head of Risk Control Department, Eric Dale.
This is intriguing: In the market recession, the burden in the eyes of investment bank leaders is not traders who cause losses at any time, nor salesmen without business, but risk control personnel. The film borrowed from Eric Dale to ask a sharp question:
"I run the risk department, I don't see why this is the natural place to start the cutting?"
After the great cleaning, everything seemed to be calm again. At this time, there are only two people left in the risk control department of the team: 23-year-old analyst Seth, who entered investment banking immediately after graduation, and 28-year-old deputy manager, Peter, PhD in Physics at MIT. After 12 hours of fast forwarding, the storyline took a sharp turn. As Peter successfully cracked Eric’s unfinished work, Peter found that the investment bank’s position control had failed, and the team’s proprietary business positions alone might have caused the problem in the midst of not violent market fluctuations. Bankruptcy.
Things quickly alarmed Will Emerson, the head of the trader, and Sam Rogers, the boss of the MBS trading team. The four people reacted completely differently in the face of this incident: the rookie Seth didn't realize the seriousness of the matter until he met the big boss Sam, and he was still enlightening the worried Peter while drinking happily: "I usually don't let work carry me away like this." Peter, as a scholar, has a very clear understanding of the extent of the incident: he lamented that people on the street did not know about the upcoming disaster, and he asked Seth, who happily shared the million-dollar salary of other executives: " Does that even sound right to you?"
As a trader with 10 years of experience, Will has a cynic worldview and always reveals the philosophy of survival of the fittest in his conversation; although instinctively aware that the sell-off is inevitable, his worries are only focused on the insecurity of his career. As the only veteran in the trading team, Sam is an orthodox banker like the old Morgan: empathetic, unwilling to betray the trust of customers, and care about his career. Even under strong pressure from the CEO, Sam has always insisted on his professional ethics.
Finally, Sam's boss, Jared Cohen, head of the capital markets department, and John Tuld, CEO and chairman of the investment bank, appeared. The personalities of these two characters are even more prominent: Jared is young and rude, but he is deeply tuned in office politics. Only after the chief risk control officer Sarah Robertson read through the analysis, he couldn't immediately deny the conclusion and learn that Peter was a rocket scientist (American slang also means extremely clever man), and calmly informed the CEO that something was wrong. And Sarah has shirk the responsibility when she didn't realize that the top scapegoat was going to be a scapegoat. The old CEO Tuld, who appeared last, did not change his face in front of Taishan collapse. In such a crisis, he was confident and humorous. Tuld's speech was both simple and obscure, frankly admitting that he didn't rely on his brain to sit in a high position; what did he rely on? It is a familiarity with history and an insight into human nature.
Tuld said that greed is the driving force of financial development, as Gekko famously said in Wall Street:
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money , for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA"
The seven roles from analysts to CEOs created by Margin Call are vivid and full, which not only conform to their identities, but also urge people to think: How does money change the smartest elite class?
Seth at the bottom is still in the excitement that he can earn $250,000 at a young age. What he cares most about is that he can earn more if he spends a few more years. He is actually dull and indifferent to the industry itself, but he knows at the end of the film. About to lose his job and cry to Jared, "This is all I ever wanted to do". Let’s take a look at the investment banking craze in various colleges and universities today. Those who rush in front are the elites in the school. Unfortunately, a few people are interested in the industry itself, and how many people’s burning passion comes from that. Earn 2.5 million U.S. dollars and drive Aston Martin as a model"?
Peter and Eric, who were scholars, were among the few people who were in a capital craze and could calmly analyze problems and recognize the emperor's new clothes. It is a pity that their ability to build bridges and send mankind to explore the universe is wronged in the central and Taiwan department that is being laid off at any time, and their original intention of giving up science is cold and realistic "the money here is significantly better".
Will is a typical sales/trader. Will has an extraordinary sense of his work, and decisively called his boss back to the office late at night, telling his two little men that there will be a sell-off tomorrow, and sold MBS to opponents cunningly and ably on the phone; he is in a secondary market. A born hunter. However, Will, or the reason for the success of Wills, is far more than just a keen sense of smell. On the way back to the company from Brooklyn, Will revealed his know-how to Seth:
"If you really wanna do this with your life you have to believe you're necessary and you are.
People wanna live like this in their cars and big fuckin' houses they can't even pay for, then you're necessary.
The only reason that they all get to continue living like kings is'cause we got our fingers on the scales in their favor.
I take my hand off and then the whole world gets really fuckin' fair really fuckin' quickly and nobody actually wants that. "
Perhaps what we should think about is not why Wills believe that greed is good, but who drives them to be greedy.
Sam is a representative of traditional investment bankers and a representative of traditional American elites. Loving, heartbroken for the death of the dog; ethical, caring about credibility, caring for his subordinates. Ironically, however, it was these "advantages" that made Sam, who entered the company at the same time as Tuld, stopped in the MD position and was led by Jared, who was young and lacking experience. Sam insisted on standing with the company's interests, but when the company's interests conflicted with professional ethics, Sam had finally issued a clearance order, betraying the trust of customers. When Sam motivated his subordinates with a hesitant tone of "You are doing it for the greater good", when Sam resigned but was persuaded by Tuld to stay and admit that "I need the money", every finance that he thought was noble and incorruptible Everyone has a resounding slap in the face: In the face of interests, principles are not worth mentioning.
Although Jared doesn't have many lines, he is an unforgettable character. The black humor of the film is that Jared himself admits that a person who opens his mouth and shuts his mouth, if he is not an investment bank, can only go to the construction site to dig holes and move bricks. However, Jared's success lies in his proficiency in office politics. Although he has no qualifications and achievements, he can subconsciously preemptive when distinguishing accident responsibility. Everyone who works in a large organization, look up, are such faces very familiar? It is too big to fail because the whole society pays for systemic risks; to what extent is the reason why the big banks fail to get rid of greed is because of the hypocrisy and destruction of workplace politicians?
Tuld is the finishing touch to the question of Wall Street in this film. In the characters of Margin Call, the higher the level, the more interesting it is. Tuld is the core of this crisis, but he is the safest person in the film. While traders were struggling to sell for the survival of the company, Tuld calmly drank coffee in the cafeteria and took notes. This extraordinary calmness is a source of confidence for allies, and an embodiment of fear for enemies. A famous general who fends off enemies and a person who governs the country, from the ages to the present, his heart is like Tuld. Tuld neither knows nor cares about financial technology; Tuld’s lines from beginning to end have almost nothing to do with the ever-changing financial products of Wall Street.
Where did his calmness and confidence come from? From his insight into human nature. "Be first, be smarter, or cheat." Tuld's lines are not against a philosopher. Both Buffett and Dalio have written philosophies at length. Philosophy studies the laws of the world, and the world is made up of people. Human nature is unchanging. With an insight into human nature, no matter how complex financial tools are, they will eventually be played with applause. The financial crisis, is it the looting of 99% by 1%, or is it a social by-product of human nature? Tuld's interpretation of the financial crisis is above Will:
”So you think we might have put a few people out of business today. That it's all for naught. You've been doing that everyday for almost forty years Sam. And if this is all for naught then so is everything out there. It's just money; it's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong. And it's certainly no different today than it's ever been. 1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987-Jesus, didn't that fuck me up good-92, 97, 2000 and whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over; we can't help ourselves. And you and I can't control it, or stop it, or even slow it. Or even ever-so-slightly alter it. We just react. And we make a lot money if we get it right.And we get left by the side of the road if we get it wrong. And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers. Happy foxes and sad sacks. Fat cats and starving dogs in this world. Yeah , there may be more of us today than there's ever been. But the percentages-they stay exactly the same."
From a shallow and profitable analyst to a deep understanding of human nature, a CEO who realizes that a crisis is inevitable and morality is worthless, this is the Ukiyo-e of the capital market, and it is also the whole process of Wall Street carving every wise man involved in it. The sound of Sam's digging at the end of the film did not come abruptly with the end of the film; what he buried was not only the dog to accompany him, but also all the other rules left by the old Morgans besides making money, as well as his entry in the past. The original intention of Wall Street.
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