The Eye of the Beholder - RnRF Reviews: The Big Short [movie]

I got to distract myself from this wretched referendum business tonight. Resurrecting the old “The Eye of the Beholder” review column seems like a good idea. 

So I watched “The Big Short” the other day. And I’m going to come right to the conclusion: it is funnier than it has any right to be and quite possibly more educational than one might expect. How so? Well, it manages to break down some of the more obscure and convoluted shenanigans of the world of banking into nice little bite-sized chunks that you can wrap your head around without getting all stressed about random terminology and auto-fellating acronyms. Nice! What’s more, those bite-sized chunks are presented in a way that is both shallow and endearing and totally captures your attention. Like when Margot Robbie explains the sub-prime bond market in bozo-language whilst sitting in her bubble bath, sipping champagne. Crude, but it works.

Dorks - Rockstars of Finance

Obviously just about all the characters are caricatures. The bankers are generally on the borderline between Slytherin-style group think and ‘greed-is-good’ Gordon Gekko infatuation (mind you, _that_ is pretty real). The wider industry is fully of has-beens, wannabes…generally sub-prime, really. The Hedge Fund guys are all really smart, oddball weirdos. With the smartest of them all basically displaying undiagnosed  Aspergers syndrome. But that doesn’t really matter, because it all works to propel the story forward. In an entertaining and understandable way. Which matters, because let’s face it, when did you last figure out you actually _wanted_ to spend two hours of your Saturday night trying to figure out how and why a fairly esoteric market for acronym-heavy derivatives contracts was essential to bring about the total and utter cluster-fucking meltdown of not only the US housing market, but basically the whole global financial world? Well, almost. But it was close. Anyway, the point is: this is fun and educational in one!! Also, for added bonus, the chief geek of them all - Neurologist turned hedge-fund manager Michael Burry - is a total metal-head and basically cranks Mastodon et al in his office while he is meditating on how the whole rotten edifice that is the sub-prime mortgage bond market will come crashing down. Forget the silly motion-picture soundtrack. Try to get a hold of the Michael-Burry-thinks-about-ARMs-resetting-as-trigger-for-the-financial-apocalypse playlist and you’ll do well with that. 

What you get is a funny - bordering on hilarious at times - ride through a world that is opaque, often maligned beyond sense and nonetheless crucial to the lives of gazillions of people without tooooo many figuring out how that is actually the case. At the end of it you might even walk away feeling a bit more enlightened about WTF went down in those crazily boring looking office buildings that financial institutions seem so fond of. And of course, the little guys win in the end. The smelly little secret you might forget by the end of the movie is that the rogues and outsiders, the little guys that ‘win’ against the banks by figuring out that the system is rotten and about to become unstuck aren’t that little to start with. These guys are all hedge fund managers. By all rational measures they are already at the top of the tree. They are worth tens of millions each where the story picks up. So be careful when you’re getting all excited about how they are taking on the man. They’re not exactly working in a coal mine. Fucked up? Yup!

That end note is a bit more depressing than I care for. How about we finish with that delightful segment where Margot Robbie Explains the mortgage bond market in a bubble bath:

See! Better already!!

“Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!” - or why you might still want to listen to the experts…

One of the most excitingly neo-luddite statements to come out of this abominable Brexit debate was Gollum’s, I mean Michael Gove’s, recent pronouncement that “people in this country [that being the UK] have had enough of experts”. What’s wrong with that? Well, in fairness one might surmise that Rock’n’Roll Finance would be sympathetic to a little anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment swagger. Why not, right? Especially, if those pesky experts pronounce in near unheard of unison that your position is utter tosh! Never mind if they are right…

The problem here, is that the thrust of the argument is really a direct assault on _reason_! It’s basically saying: ‘Don’t listen to that laborious and complex line of argument that refutes what I’m saying, because I promise you unlimited free ice-cream!’ Not accepting a rational or empirical arguments because you don’t like them doesn’t really make you a buccaneering rebel. It makes you the pawn of whoever told to walk away from the argument and listen to mood music instead! By rejecting an ‘expert’s’ reasoned argument you are not sticking it to the man, but you are making yourself an idiot. You don’t like an expert opinion? Attack the premise! Challenge the chain of evidence! Review the data! Muster a counterargument! Above all, ENGAGE! 

Exchanging information and views in open debate is a fabulous way to make things work. To arrive a better solution a problem. 

Be the show! - Getting your inner nerd on is very rock'n'roll!

Of course, what really is infuriating about ‘experts’ is that their relevance is often a reminder that the problems they look at (their area of ‘expertise’ - get it?!?!) are complex. Getting to grips with complex problems or issues requires that one has to spend an inordinately large amount of time and effort trying to understand them and untangle them. Sadly that means you might find yourself on the blackfoot when dealing with a subject that requires more than just casual attention to fully appreciate. As it happens, these days that more often than not means just about everything worth thinking about in the first place. Does that make you angry? Do you feel marginalised because somebody might be better placed to make a judgement call on an issue that you? Well, then get yourself to the library, online, into a debating club or whatever else and buff up your kung-fu! In the words of the might Rob Flynn: 

The more the sense of ignorance

The more intense is the pain

Fix it! Get yourself educated! Don’t reject the ‘expert’, learn how to beat them! That, is Rock’n’Roll! That is when you can properly say "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!"

*Please crank up the volume*