Recently I finally had the chance to watch the Academy Award winning film "The Big Short".
The film consisted of well known and respected actors, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, John Magaro, Finn Wittrock, and many other talents. While the theatrical, and production side of the movie was well done in terms of directing choices, acting, and production value, the overall story is a story that needs to be told constantly to everyone around the globe.
The movie begins with Christian Bale's character Michael Burry discovering that the U.S. housing market is extremely unstable being based on high-risk subprime. Anticipating that the market will collapse during the second quarter of 2007, as interest rates would rise on many adjustable-rate mortgages, he envisions an opportunity to profit. Several people involved in stocks, people that worked in banks, worked on wall street, or didn't work in actual business's at all, seemed to understand Michael's vision, and followed up upon his idea of profiting off of this tragic event that was about to approach the entire country.
So why should you watch this movie?
You should watch it because it is a truthful movie about fraud and corruption of Wall Street banks that caused the stock market crash to happen. It exposes the criminal actions of these people in a fun and comprehensive way. May people, especially my generation, are unaware of how detrimental this event was to our country, simply because we were entirely too young to understand the concept of the stock market crashing.
Most people are unaware that 2.6 million people lost their jobs in 2008. Job losses were spread across a wide variety of industries. Manufacturing lost 149,000 jobs, the leisure and hospitality industries cut 22,000 jobs, and the mining industry shed 1,000 positions. In the education system, more than 300,000 teachers lost their jobs.
I was unaware of the detriments the stock market crashing had on the millions of people who live in our country, but now I can say I have some knowledge and it's important to be prepared now for the possibility of another crash approaching us. With election season upon us, “The Big Short” serves as an extremely effective way to become more educated on the topic of wall street and how the system affects our country immensely. I highly encourage all voters to watch this movie, so they can make a decision in terms of who should be leading us. The overall question is: What can prevent this economic crisis and how can we stop it? There is no way to truly stop it, but hopefully there will be a leader who can pass laws to put restrictions on Wall Street to prevent any future disasters.
