Problems- From a Finance Student
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drexeltoker — 14 years ago(November 19, 2011 09:34 AM)
Good grief this conversation has gotten out of hand.
To the person who mentioned Bernanke he's a central banker. He executes monetary policy and while he did not catch all the signals early and did not fully understand the entire securitization machine, that is not indicative of those that work at the banks or with the products daily.
I think at the end it is easy to forget the underlying trigger that truly caused panic: that real estate prices finally stopped appreciating. I have no doubt the bubble would have continued should prices have kept rising.
To the person who went to IESE or INSEAD or the like (note to all: anytime someone qualifies one of the 'world's best biz schools' you can rest assured they're not referring to Harvard, Wharton, Chicago, Stanford and the other American elites) thank you for your detail career history in the insurance biz, in some cases just quite irrelevant to this topic. -
Kompressor_Fan — 14 years ago(November 20, 2011 10:16 AM)
Getting back to the original topic. I will be quick. I'm a CPA, I have a masters in accounting, and a bachelors in economics and finance. This stuff ain't Greek to me, but it is to most people.
That is the whole point of the 'explain it like I'm 10 years old' lines in the movie. They took a little bit of dramatic license because they wanted the majority of the audience to understand what was going on, as well. Not just the CPAs and CFAs.
We in the financial services industries have our little languages, in part, so that people will have a reason to pay us. That's all well and good, but it doesn't work in the context of a drama. If the script were loaded with with references to, say, tranches and credit default swaps you would lose the audience in less than five minutes. -
fr1-2 — 13 years ago(September 14, 2012 08:34 PM)
Funny, I have the exact same degree and qualification as you are, but still those graphs sounds greek to me. I dont recall anywhere in my CPA course anything about VAR or advanced stuff they mentioned in the movie.
Only when I was doing my applied finance degree, then I learned about these MSB and else
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mathmaniac — 9 years ago(January 19, 2017 04:23 PM)
See 'The Big Short' (Brad Pitt, Christian Bale) - Alan Greenspan is referred to in the film as one of the 'architects' of the crisis - I believe he was a central banker, no?
I remember an old woman saying to me that things were looking good because Greenspan 'would take care of us.' I thought then we were in for a beep of trouble. It came along soon enough -
robertmichel — 14 years ago(December 03, 2011 05:01 AM)
Exactly. Thank you for remarking this. I was going to myself, because I am not a financial expert far from it but I really want to see this movie because I like this kind of drama.
The portrayal of the characters, the decisions they make, what that tells me about their personality but also what the consequences are for other characters etc. that's the reason why I like watching movies, so I don't worry about what kind of degree they've got (unless that's relevant to the plot and then, too, I'd like to have it explained to me in layman's terms). I mean, for example, I'm not a lawyer nor have I ever been in the military, but I really enjoyed "A Few Good Men".
So, too bad if it draws anyone out of the movie but when I'm going to see this, I'll be glad they included those lines in the movie to help me understand the drama, help me understand what the impact is of what's being said. -
tuviolitihane — 14 years ago(November 25, 2011 03:51 PM)
Are you kidding me here people?
- Who cares who you are.
- The film made it pretty clear that the chief knew very well what was going on. They were just playing "golden retrievers".
Seems that finance education doesn't provide ability to concentrate nor brains. Maybe just a knowledge of cool acronyms.
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szisoman — 14 years ago(November 26, 2011 06:00 AM)
Look at it this way. portraying them as incompetent is much better than portraying them as smart professionals who understood the risks.
If they didn't know, then the blame lays with whomever placed them in those positions.
If they did know, which you suggest, then they are accountable for causing all that wreck.
Taking risks is part of life, but some decisions are plainly stupid & destructive & should never be taken. Is it ambition or greed?
" Let's go get a drink & smoke a cigarette" -
kcommings — 14 years ago(November 29, 2011 06:36 PM)
Having the guys at the top say things like "just speak plainly" wasn't to show them as incompetent. It was a device to enable the problem to be explained to the movie audience who are not financial people.
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GuyOnTheLeft — 13 years ago(December 06, 2012 06:56 AM)
Right. It's interesting to read the arguments over how much the higher-ups would know, but ultimately this is the real answer in terms of film language. Wikipedia says the screenwriter's father worked for forty years on Wall Street, so I'm sure he knows what he's talking about, but also knows the average filmgoer won't have the same level of technical knowledge.
In many cases I prefer people in movies to talk more realistically rather than mouthing unrealistic dialogue to advance the plot. But this is an exception, because if they scripted all the meetings to be exactly like they would be in real life, the jargon and shorthand would be so thick it would be opaque to 99 percent of the public, including people who are otherwise very intelligent and educated but just not familiar with the industry.
See a list of my favourite films here: http://www.flickchart.com/slackerinc -
ehalotte — 9 years ago(June 14, 2016 05:18 AM)
If you want to know how it still is in the financial industry read the boek of Joris Luyendijk based on his work for the Guardian. It' called in the dutch : het kan niet waar zijn" in english "Swimmming with sharks" It makes you shiver. And this written 7 years after the big financial crises!
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GuyOnTheLeft — 9 years ago(June 14, 2016 07:33 AM)
That's the name of a pretty good Kevin Spacey movie as well.
My top 250:
http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?user=SlackerInc&perpage=250 -
taka_69 — 14 years ago(December 03, 2011 12:20 AM)
the film is not only seen by finance students. when the writers have a character say "explain it to me like i'm a child" is so that the percentage of non-finance related people in the target audience will understand. it's annoying sometimes, i know.
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joey-tribbiani — 14 years ago(December 10, 2011 07:05 PM)
I think it is fairly obvious that (considering you are finance "students" you won't know this) that not everybody in an investment or finance firm knows what everybody else is doing i.e. you can't just assume that one man knows what is going on.
The head of the firm is usually a strategist.
The head of a department is usually an operations manager
So forth.
What you saw was not inadequacy but simply people saying tell me quickly because we don't have time for you to explain what you have been working on for hours, days or weeks.
That's it. -
reginald_dorsey — 14 years ago(December 12, 2011 09:03 AM)
That was for the benefit of the audience. Most of the people watching the movie, even many smart people, wouldn't exactly understand what was being discussed. Movies often figure out ways to explain esoteric info they think the viewer may not understand right away, especially in a 2-hour span of time.
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jim008 — 14 years ago(December 16, 2011 06:03 PM)
I don't know why CFA is even mentioned because very few bankers have it or even care about it. The only exception is if you work asset management or research. Most of the top banks hire right out of Ivy Leagues and the CFA is normally just eye candy unless the person interviewing you just happens to have one.
There are too many people claiming to know more than they really do. A student without work experience is about the same as anybody else who watched this movie except the terms are more familiar. Top banks dont really care what your degree is; there are investment bankers with art history degrees. There is nothing worse than training an undergrad or MBA coming in thinking they already know everything. At least a history major wouldnt have to be told that what they learned is useless here. Majority of the bankers may still have financial degrees but thats more due to the fact that not too many art majors would apply to banks.
Even people with work experience shouldnt claim to know anything just because they worked insurance. Theres no correlation between the two different businesses. Citing a few scams thats was prevalent after the housing bust isnt really related to banking. The news covered those scams for months and all different kinds of companies were doing it so why single out just banks? Also, nobody ever describes Harvard or Wharton as rated number 1 by WSJ. It could be rated number 1 for getting a job as a bus driver as far as I can tell. If youre going to claim that your school is the best than dont be afraid to say the name of it.
A lot of MDs at the banks are more like glorified car salesmen. They are not as knowledgeable as a car engineer or how the new hybrids work but know enough to push for a sale. Before the crisis, people were in love with the new mortgage derivatives because finally they found a way to trade it but not many people who purchased it really understood much of it. They were simply sold on the dumb down premise that people would do anything to keep a roof over their heads. Of course it also helped that real estate value hasnt gone down for like 100 years.
My point is to just enjoy the movie. Stop going around saying well I studied this field or worked at some totally unrelated field and this is or isnt how the banking industry works. The good managers often are the ones who would be willing to ask questions regardless if its answered by an analyst. The know-it-all managers are normally the ones that end up taking down their own firm. -
thethingy23 — 14 years ago(December 22, 2011 05:03 PM)
Well, it's a movie, and the audience might not understand what's going on without some exposition. It would look kinda stupid if the top people parroted it back to their underlings who just demonstrated they understood what was going on. It's not like this is the first movie where the technique involving the "speak to me in plain english" line has been used.