This thread is definitely refreshing to read through, and given me a movie playlist to keep me busy for a while!
Rogue Trader was great. I’ve probably watched it 10x. Leeson used to be on ET and we would chat in email. He stopped posting when he got the Football gig. Margin Call had some decent moments; the talk about bonuses was realistic, but the plot was terrible.
Why is this so? Is this not a reasonable assumption of what happened in the '08 crash? It made for good story flow.
Everything is great -> guy in risk says Gaussian Copula is brkn -> we're all going to die. Monumentally stupid.
Well, I was not involved in markets in any way in 2008, so my questions about that crash abound in my head. For example, is what they say in the movie true? Were large banks heavily leveraged in MBS, lent at rates so damned low that a crash was inevitable because borrowers are inherently deceitful assholes who will default, because they KNOW they will not pay their loans back?
The MBS-pools were rated up to AA with a ton of non-performing loans. IIRC 8% nonperf resulted in a technical default. So you go 90-days no pay and boom. You had desks shorting CDS in AA-A paper while shorting subprime outright. The AA was just high-priced dog shit that had further to fall. Ahem. AIG. LEH's 5%ers. Margin Call acted as if this one risk-dept had an "a-ha" moment. Completely implausible and pandering.