It was recently announced that the book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, written by Micheal Lewis will soon be made into a movie starring Brad Pitt. The book is essentially a Wall Street perspective about the housing and credit bubble of the 2,000s. It depicts the long bull market where a nation loses its financial mind. What started as a government campaign to help Americans into home ownership, became a great idea on Wall Street, to take the consumer out of high interest credit card debt and put them into lower interest mortgage debt.
I remember the Countrywide commercials like it was yesterday. They talked about your home being a “bank” that you could just tap into. Countrywide bragged about helping those that had previously been turned down for loans because they had no down payment, no proof of income, or even a growing family with alot of debt.
The doomsday machine was built on easy credit and Wall Street greed. Young Wall Street had no business making huge bets with other people’s money, selling complex securitized mortgage bonds from loans that Americans could not afford and had no idea how they worked. The financial gluttony of investors led to and caused the financial crisis of 2008. America is left with a bad taste for Wall Street and our government’s “brilliant” ideas to help Americans. At what price do we take a hard look at America’s budget? At what point does any individual declare their own freedom from debilitating debt? How do we even stop ourselves from getting into financial trouble in the future?
