No, Tuld really is the smartest man in whatever room. He undersells himself to put people at ease, but the speed with which he reels off the year of every crash in modern history shows that he is the only one in the movie with the chessboard view.

It's the man above the big men that pulls the strings and knows EXACTLY what's going on.

I think the point of that was to show that "the workers" and their immediate manager (Dale) knew what they were doing (figures wise) while every other "Manager" up the chain had no idea what they were talking about and had to have it explained to them all.
From Will to Sam to Cohen to even Tuld in the big meeting saying "Explain it to me like I'm a Labrador" or whatever he said.
These upper management guys are getting paid a fortune and don't even know what's happening around them. I think its funny.

Spot on.

You're the only one who got it, besides me, in this thread at least!

I think the point is to show how people with skill and precision have lured away from engineering jobs for lucrative jobs in finance. Eric's intelligence could have been used to actually build things but instead it was used to build portfolios built on fluff.

They could've done that with his using round estimates rather than showing off with exact calculations.

I thought the point of it was to illustrate how the work on the bridge represented a real value that had a real benefit for real people, unlike his current work shuffling loans around and getting paid a lot of money for it.

Wasn't he originally an engineer?

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