The Big Short Movie Ethics

If you are ever interested in watching a movie involving some seriously flawed ethics, The Big Short is the one you want to watch. The storyline is as follows: In 2008, Wall Street guru Michael Burry (Christian Bale) realizes that a number of subprime home loans (A subprime mortgage is a type of loan granted to individuals with poor credit histories (often below 600), who, as a result of their deficient credit ratings, would not be able to qualify for conventional mortgages) are in danger of defaulting. Burry bets against the housing market by throwing more than one billion dollars into credit default swaps. His actions attract the attention of banker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), hedge-fund specialist Mark Baum (Steve
Carell) and others.

Together, these men make a fortune by taking full advantage of the impending economic collapse in America.
This was the second time I watched this movie, and it was just as interesting, albeit disgusting, as the first time I watched it. The movie in its entirety is a morality play that shows the incompetence and poor morals of those who handle enormous sums of economic money. For example, Mark Baum (Carell), along with his cohorts, runs a fund and starts trying to understand the housing market, and in turn learns of so-called “ninja” loans that they can pass off to big banks after closing and then collect the fees. Baum cannot believe what he is hearing because it sounds so illegal, until someone one else says something like “why not do it? We’ll be rich.” To which in turn, Baum decides to play along. This made me think that he was really for it the whole time, but he wanted to appear as though he was business moral, that is, until someone else spoke up.
The entire time you watch the movie, or from my point of view anyway, you dislike everyone involved. The filmmakers try to be funny at times with quotes such as, “Instead, they do the usual, blame immigrants and poor people,” (which did make me giggle, but more in a cynical tone than actual gut-cramping laughter). But because this is a true story that affected so many Americans, you are just left feeling bitter and angry once the curtain closes.
Throughout the film, you do see many of the stakeholders involved have their emotions toyed with about whether what they are doing is “right” or not.

Unfortunately, everyone loses their moral compass to money; as most people do. One character that surprised me (especially since a lot of his movies drive me insane) was Brad Pitt’s character Ben Rickert. He plays an ex-trader who has abandoned Wall Street to hide out and learn to grow his own food while waiting for the world to collapse. It makes me wonder just how many more ex-traders are like that. I wonder how much knowledge they actually privileged to that us as regular civilians will never know about. One of the most profound things he said in the movie that really stuck with me was when he was speaking with two traders, who are on to “the big short.” The young guns are celebrating because they know they are going to make a bunch of money and Ben (Pitt) asks something along the lines of if they know how much suffering is going to be caused when this happens. He still helps them though, which really stuck with me because they all knew how much suffering this was going to cause to the larger population, but they didn’t care. They were all only concerned with money. I think it really speaks to the human condition and Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. Be the best or

starve.