Hello! Welcome to the big short episode of Slate Money Goes to the Movies. I'm Felix Amalif Axios. I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios. Hello, hello. And we are doing something we haven't done on Slate Money.

Slate Money Goes to the Movies here on two, which is basically talk about it's not a documentary, but it's not a documentary. It's a kind of true story. The big short adapted by Adam McKay from the very, very true story written by Michael Lewis and put it out in book form.

And the man who brought it to us is Kurt Anderson. Welcome. Happy to be here.

Kurt, welcome back. We will happily have you on to talk about absolutely anything or nothing. Do you have something you want to plug?

Sure, everything I've ever done. You know, the books are still selling, the podcasts are still available, so yeah.

Kurt's novel, Stefan. Yeah, well, you know, thank you. And one of them, the first one actually called Turn of the Century, is, you know, connected to this world a bit. So yeah, Kurt Anderson.com just gamble in my love.

It's not a big gamble. Kurt, why did you, why did you pick this movie? I almost never see movies more than once. So I thought, well, that was a good movie.

And you hadn't done it on this program before. And I'd like to see it again. It was one of the few ones left. Yeah.

I'd like to see it again. And I remember it being pretty remarkable, pretty remarkably good. And I, you know, who knows, you know, eight years later, a lot of water into the bridge since then.

You know, in addition to all of my feelings and thoughts about it then. And now again, from rewatching it, it was just a pleasure to rewatch it.

So, so we will start right there. Um, coming up on sleep money goes to the movies. Kurt, tell me like, what did you think of it the first time around and did it hold up?

I liked it held up. You know, I, um, I hadn't read Michael's book when I saw the movie. I had since read it. So there's that. And, and it was, you know, it was in 2014.

We were still in recovery from the crash and the recession at that point. And, and I remember it being just this extraordinary thing.

I might try to ever seen a movie, a feature film that was simultaneously so didactic, you know, quite literally. Yes. And sophisticated about this subject and business and finance, which has always been my hobby horse of mine about, you know, business in movies and TV that it used to be so terrible almost all of the time.

And indeed, one of the things that led me to try to do it kind of sort of better in my first novel. But so that is didactic and sophisticated and totally entertaining.

I specifically remembered and I think everybody talked about it at the time is there's Margot Robbie in a bathtub talking about whatever credit to fall swaps or whatever.

But I realized rewatching it. And I realized obviously I realized it then as well that there's so much the balance between fun and funniness and humor and Adam McKay jolly and a jolly to me is in perfect balance with this giant subject of systemic horror that it tells.

Mortgage back securities, subprime loans, tranches. It's pretty confusing, right? Does it make you feel bored or stupid? Well, it's supposed to.

Wall Street loves to use confusing terms to make you think only they can do what they do. Or even better for you just to leave them the fuck alone. So here's Margot Robbie in a bubble bath to explain.

Basically, Lewis Rayneries mortgage bonds were amazingly profitable for the big banks. They made billions and billions on their two percent fee. They got the selling into these bonds. But then they started running out of mortgages to put in them. After all, there are only so many homes and so many people with good enough jobs to buy them, right?

So the banks started filling these bonds with riskiah and riskiah mortgages. Thank you. That way I can keep that profit machine journey, right?

By the way, these risky mortgages are called subprime. So whenever you hit subprime, think shit. A friend of mine, Kuburi, found out that these mortgage bonds that were supposedly 65 percent AAA were actually just mostly full of shit.

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