I believe it was very simple.
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Jelly-4 — 13 years ago(July 04, 2012 05:14 PM)
Yeah I thought those scenes were more for the viewer. Jeremy IRons asking the analyst to put things in plain English is so that the audience knows what's happening and put some context before the trading scenes play out. The avg. viewer isn't going to understand all the financial jargon so they had to put it as plainly as possible and repeat it several times.
I didn't think for a minute that in real life someone in Jeremy Irons' position wouldn't know what's going on.
Are the boardroom scenes realistic? No. Do they make for better movie making? Yes. -
lancedulak — 13 years ago(July 05, 2012 06:42 AM)
You have a huge shock coming. I'm also shocked (not really.. you are a business/finance major you guys arent known for brains or creativity in general) that you dont realise very very few people in the financial sector even understand all of their quadrant of the economy. It's rather shocking that you dont realise this is something like what just happened in the US.
In the US crash 99% of wall street had no clue that there was danger in what was happening. The low level bankers pushing loans out the door as fast as possible didnt really know.. all they knew was they could resell loans as fast as they could make them. The bankers knew they owned the ratings companies and could include high risk and low risk loans and resell them to mega-investors .. as low risk loans. Because they owned the ratings companies. The ratings companies employees knew they were under no risk because their bosses told them to rate the loans A. The investors "knew" the industry was regulated therefore loans they bought as A loans were good investments. Noone saw how this could cause a collapse. Even the thieves at the top thought it would just cause a little pain to the megainvestors. A FEW people on wall street got it.. sortof reversed the process betting on the loans collapsing and got insanely rich. Heres the thing. There were a handfull of thieves at the very very top who set it in motion. There were a handfull of midlevel rating experts who got that corruption was going on. Noone but those few who bet against the scheme had any clue as to the whole system.. or what was going to happen.
Or more simply there are maybe 50 people in this country who can accurately explain derivatives. There are probably ten times that who know it is going on to this day.. exactly as it was before. The fact that an econ student doesnt understand.. any of this.. should tell you that the upper level suits dont either. -
detroit-velvet-smooth — 13 years ago(August 05, 2012 12:42 PM)
I think people are being a bit dim here. The best explanation for why he wanted them to speak in as plain terms as possible was becuase he knew that as long as you understood the system and the language that you know how to play with it and change it around. They are salesmen and they and hucking a product. When asses are on the line, and something this huge happens it makes perfect sense for the big guy to say "spare me the BS, and just get to the point because I already understand it in theory but don't know the actual implications of what has happened and I don't want you equivocating and using verbal sleight of hand to ass cover."
Basically, I see it as the big boy doesn't want to be handled. Remember when they went in one of them warned "Just tell the truth, nobody here is smart enough to lie, even the rocket scientist." I see this as corroborating the above sentiment. He may sound and speak simply and act like you have to dumb it down, but really maybe he's just handling them.
When he starts rifling off recession and crash years it seems to me that he's pretty well educated on the market and its history and a guy like that doesn't seem like the type to not know whats happening today but be well versed enough to recite off every crash since the formation of the republic.
Just a thought. -
Korios — 13 years ago(August 28, 2012 02:39 AM)
This was indeed a huge plot fault yet it was clearly a deliberate plot fault, a "plot device" as they call them. It is quite simple : you cannot make a film out of charts or numbers on a computers screen or sheets of printed text. You have to use dialog. And you have to use an average Joe dialog, one that can be understood by everyone but really dumb ones. So they made the top heads economics illiterate so that we could make sense of what was taking place via the dialog. However a deliberate plot fault is still a plot fault, so your points are valid.
signature start:
The term "suspension of disbelief" was coined by LOLW, the League of Lazy Writers. -
Ace_101 — 13 years ago(September 24, 2012 05:58 AM)
Dude, I'm a Finance student myself (2nd year of my MBA) and while I agree that the CEO or the HOD must understand the situation, they are not really required to really delve into it. At that higher post, you are not really supposed to know the tiny details but rather managing the people under you and making sure everyone is achieving the targets.
BTW, I'm 25 and I'm considering giving the first level of CFA next June. Have you given it?
RISE -
sexualbanana — 13 years ago(September 30, 2012 10:00 PM)
It's fairly simple:
- The average audience member doesn't know the terminology or the industry, so some exposition needs to occur, otherwise the audience is just going to waste 2 hours listening to people speak gibberish.
- If you can explain a complex concept in simple language, then you actually understand the concept. It's a way to filter out the BSers and the competent people.
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matt605 — 12 years ago(April 07, 2013 03:21 PM)
I saw their ignorance as a necessary plot device. Someone has to be stupid so that the theater audience can keep up to speed on what is happening. When the CEO wants things explained as if to a three year old, he's doing it for the benefit of those in the meeting and for the benefit of those in the audience. The writers don't stop there though. The CEO continues on to use analogies that people can understand, with the music stopping in musical chairs. The managers do the same thing as they escalate the problem.
What I found unrealistic was the way the company came to life between midnight and six a.m. I'd expect under normal conditions it would take 24 hours to implement a fire sale like that. Incidentally, most people talk about Lehman, but I recall that one big firm did liquidate its holdings in one day by surprise in Spring 2008. Just can't recall who it was. -
ehalotte — 9 years ago(June 14, 2016 04:50 AM)
this film is not about Lehman, but more about Goldman Sachs the only company not affected directly by these ABS.
These scene's are not only for the audience but are also very realistic as in hearings later on most CEO's declared to have no clue on what they were selling. The only knew it made them very rich (in the short term). -
silentman01 — 12 years ago(April 12, 2013 02:32 PM)
To be honest I don't think your point has much weight because if you remember that in a scene with Irons and Spacey they refer to each other as salesmen. I have worked in a financial firm before as a consultant and in our training, I remember our division head posed us with a question which strikes me to this day. He asked what was the most important thing about being a consultant/salesmen, I replied in the class that the most important thing is the ability to be able to ANALYZE the market. He told me (the division chief) that it was the LEAST important thing to know, the most important thing is building relationships.Consultants/Brokers build the relationships and the analysts are left with the job of analyzing packages suited to the client's specific needs. Very few brokers have a CFA, I would estimate probably 10% (if that) have it. The people you mentioned specifically (Tuld, Will and Sam) are people who follow into the first Category while it is the job of Sara Robertson and people like Eric whose job is to decipher the patterns and draw projections on these packages they sell. I practiced in Canada where if you passed the CSC (Canadian Securities Course) and held a job at a financial firm (such as Investor's Group), you were authorized to sell these packages if you received the proper registration from the MFDA and other organizations (depending on how many types of products you wanted to sell), for futures and options you would have to pass the DFC(Derivatives Fundamentals Course) to sell them. None of these courses are even 5% as hard as the CFA which is more popular among analysts. Thus, the movie actually seemed very realistic to me having worked in the business for a year. You also pointed out that the Head Engineer obviously knows and fully understands engineering, but engineers don't usually become the CEO of a construction company. I loved the movie but I also understand your concerns regarding the flaws that may make it implausible.
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di1an — 12 years ago(May 23, 2013 09:38 AM)
It wasn't just exposition - remember, Tuld (Irons) says "I didn't get here by being the smartest". My dad was a risk manager (EMBA, Cranfield) at Citigroup, London from 1984 right up until the crash in 2008, I watched this film with him and he said it was unbelievably accurate. I have a cousin (LSE, MFE) at RBS who said the same. Essentially the very senior people got their by means other than technical skills.
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Kiers77 — 12 years ago(August 17, 2013 02:11 PM)
I disagree somewhat with your point:
"The HEADS of a trading floor are going to understand the business"
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The problem was discovered by Risk Management. And their numbers and methodologies (eg, VaR) (RAROC) (Basel III Risk wtd capital) keep changing for different these kinds of reporting requirements: (US, Internal Performance, and BIS).
Plus, banking's a daily numbers game. I wouldn't expect the higher ups to know the intricate details of every spreadsheet that goes through every department. Yes, upper management get daily back office reports from each area, but I don't think the "keep it simple" remark is off base at all.
Not at all like say engineering or physics or the "hard sciences" where the theory is written in stone and empirical. Finance is all about variable human behavior.
Would you expect managers to know about the algorithms in HFT today? -
stant6 — 12 years ago(August 30, 2013 02:30 PM)
I don't know if others have said this, (but I agree that the heads would understand the data and its implications), but it was how the writers let the audience not get lost in the complicated jargon, so they used the "dumb" heads as their proxy.
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Bluefishtank2012 — 12 years ago(November 30, 2013 12:16 PM)
Well said
He was trying to get everyone on the lowest common denominator so he could take charge and tell him to sell.
It's easier to screw people over if ur dumb and don't have the brains to show heart