Michael Lewis is the author of “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” and Lewis’ main theme, or the main point, that he is trying to get across is how the 2008 financial crisis came to be, who saw it coming, and how people reacted. Lewis has experience with Wall Street and has worked for Salomon Brothers when he was younger. Today, Lewis is an American non-fiction author and financial journalist. There were three things I highly enjoyed “The Big Short”: the character development, themes, and personalization. During the prologue, it is described that a financial analyst, Meredith Whitney, made national headlines for successfully predicting that Citigroup firm needs to “slash its dividend or go bust.” This book makes gives the impression that Whitney started the beginning of the economic collapse. This seems unlikely; Whitney only made the prediction that she made based off of her analysis of the markets. Fortunately, she gained the nation's ear. She called out all Wall Street firms and told them that their investments and mortgages were worthless. She was bold and truthful when the everyone else doubted her. The amount of character growth and development is something that I really appreciate in any form of storytelling, but I especially thought that is was important in this …show more content…
And it is honestly a scary thought. Not only do they have so much power, they are backed by the U.S. Government. I came to the conclusion that the film’s pace was fast and therefore, harder to comprehend the whole situation. Lewis took his time to draw out needed backstory and relevancy. Is there much from stopping another financial crisis striking again? You will be able to answer that question after reading this
The most important thing any writer can do is to give their characters a feel of
It is important to create complex, progressive characters. Characters should speak with intent and purpose. You can establish who a character is through tone and what they say. You can also reveal character through thoughts and background information. Not all characters have to have an origin; they can just be there. You should have conflicting traits between the characters. Challenging your characters adds
In October 1929, the United States stock market crashed due to panic selling. This crash started a rippling effect that contributed to a world wide economic crisis called the Great Depression. This crash was such a shock because of the economic expansion of the 1920’s when the Dow Jones average reached an all time high of three hundred eighty one. The year 1928 was a time of optimism and the stock market had become a place where everyday people truly believed that they could become rich. People everywhere were talking about the market and newspapers were reporting stories of ordinary people such as chauffeurs, maids, and teachers making millions off the stock market. People who didn’t have the money bought on margin. The stock market was booming and the excitement about the market caused a lot of over speculation. People ignored the small signs of the impending crash until Black Thursday, October 24, 1929. Four days later the stock market fell again.
The stock market crash of 1929 is the primary event that led to the collapse of stability in the nation and ultimately paved the road to the Great Depression. The crash was a wide range of causes that varied throughout the prosperous times of the 1920’s. There were consumers buying on margin, too much faith in businesses and government, and most felt there were large expansions in the stock market. Because of all these...
Frederick Lewis Allen’s book tells in great detail how the average American would have lived in the 1930’s. He covers everything from fashion to politics and everything in between. He opens with a portrait of American life on September 3, 1929, the day before the first major stock market crash. His telling of the events immediately preceding and following this crash, and the ensuing panic describe a scene which was unimaginable before.
A major theme in the novel is exposing Wall Street's greed and brutality. The story begins with Solomon Brothers chairman John Gutfreund challenging board member John Meriwether to a game of Liars Poker, a card game, with one million dollars at stake. Meriwether raises his bet to ten million, setting the scene for the brutish and greed-filled novel. Once at Solomon, Lewis was first placed in the training program on the forty-first floor. The training program, as well as the rest of the floor, is mostly comprised of white men in perpetual competition with each other.
The setting in both of these stories greatly contributed to the understanding the characters better and in general the whole story.
Not only were millions of Americans been put out of work due to these manager’s actions, the American financial markets themselves were pushed to the brink of collapse. Despite the fact that the global financial markets, in reality, are not perfectly efficient, there is a corrective mechanism built into the day-to-day trading in the market. When prices are driven down by large sells, either by large investors or a movement in a stock, there are usually new buyers for these stocks at the cheaper price. Managers of...
It is often said that perception outweighs reality and that is often the view of the stock market. News that a certain stock may be on the rise can set off a buying spree, while a tip that one may be on decline might entice people to sell. The fact that no one really knows what is going to happen one way or the other is inconsequential. John Kenneth Galbraith uses the concept of speculation as a major theme in his book The Great Crash 1929. Galbraith’s portrayal of the market before the crash focuses largely on massive speculation of overvalued stocks which were inevitably going to topple and take the wealth of the shareholders down with it. After all, the prices could not continue to go up forever. Widespread speculation was no doubt a major player in the crash, but many other factors were in play as well. While the speculation argument has some merit, the reasons for the collapse and its lasting effects had many moving parts that cannot be explained so simply.
...th stories you can see that the supernatural events and people played a big role in helping show the characters courage and desire to assist their people.
Development of characters is an important aspect to all stories. It’s seen in almost every, movie, book and even tv show ever aired or published. Usually it is seen when the character undergoes some game changing events that affect either their own life or the lives of others. For example Benjamin Linus in the show Lost. He was able to cause chaos and destruction with only a few key choice words. Though as his allies were being decimated, you began to see another side of him, that revealed his deep insecurity that drives him. Along with the fact that he never truly had a plan but just faith in a power he never understood. In the end, he ended up getting manipulated by some of the people that he used to control. He
Despite having been around for over one hundred years, people began developing poor judgement when it came to investments in the late nineteenth century. Out of desire to participate in the ever growing popularity of the stock market, people took out large amounts of stock on an installment plan, with money they did not have. As Harry J. Carmen and Harold C. Syrett described in their publication of A History of the American People, as investing in stocks increased in popularity, “the exchange became more of a betting ring.” (Document 5) and “security prices were forced up by competitive bidding rather than by any fundamental improvement in American (business).” (Document 5). The stock market became a game, a challenge that was not fully thought through. This lead to certain businesses getting ahead of others, not due to their success, but because of the uneducated support they were getting from those who knew nothing about the businesses they were investing in, trying to get rich quick. Since those who took out stocks on installment could not pay them off, the stock market eventually collapsed all together. On October 29, 1929, the New York Times published an issue with the headline “STOCK PRICES SLUMP $14,000,000,000 IN NATION-WIDE STAMPEDE TO UNLOAD” (Document 3). Leading up to the ultimate crash, people began to see it coming and at the last second
The "subprime crises" was one of the most significant financial events since the Great Depression and definitely left a mark upon the country as we remain upon a steady path towards recovering fully. The financial crisis of 2008, became a defining moment within the infrastructure of the US financial system and its need for restructuring. One of the main moments that alerted the global economy of our declining state was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sunday, September 14, 2008 and after this the economy began spreading as companies and individuals were struggling to find a way around this crisis. (Murphy, 2008) The US banking sector was first hit with a crisis amongst liquidity and declining world stock markets as well. The subprime mortgage crisis was characterized by a decrease within the housing market due to excessive individuals and corporate debt along with risky lending and borrowing practices. Over time, the market apparently began displaying more weaknesses as the global financial system was being affected. With this being said, this brings into question about who is actually to assume blame for this financial fiasco. It is extremely hard to just assign blame to one individual party as there were many different factors at work here. This paper will analyze how the stakeholders created a financial disaster and did nothing to prevent it as the credit rating agencies created an amount of turmoil due to their unethical decisions and costly mistakes.
The “Inside job” movie proves how neo- liberalism system has turned this world into a chaos. I find this movie very informative, hard to believe but it shows the reality of the world in which we live. The movie is structured into five parts which are: how we get here, the bubble, the crisis, accountability, and where we are now. The movie denounces how academic economic experts, politicians, and board of directors use their political influences on financial industry. Those experts are extremely corrupt and above all very selfish. They have no feelings for the majority and totally ignore inequality. They all work together based on the same ideas, use the same techniques and strategies to make money. They come up with policies and complicated laws that are hard for people to understand, and they are the only one who benefit from those laws.
Michael Lewis’s The Big Short tells the tale of the 2008 financial crisis from the perspective of a few idiosyncratic characters that saw it coming. Unlike big financial institutions that underestimated the risk of increasingly extending subprime mortgage loans to uncreditworthy customers, Lewis’ characters gauged such risk accurately and anticipated the eventual burst of the housing bubble. Not only did they foresee the inevitable, but they also made a fortune by betting on its happening. Had they conformed to the public sentiment of extreme optimism and confidence in the stability of the real estate market, they would not have reaped immense monetary rewards. Between the lines of The Big Short, there lurks, albeit not too covertly, a message about the benefits of nonconformity. While conformity is often times socially encouraged and applauded, it is important to wonder at times whether going against the flow would be of greater benefit to us or our community. In Michael Lewis’s narrative, defiance of the status quo as a result of skepticism toward financial markets has yielded big payoff, whereas conformity to the widespread denial of the housing market’s unpredictability has incurred massive losses.