{"id":22140,"date":"2015-12-13T21:11:31","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T02:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=22140"},"modified":"2015-12-13T21:11:31","modified_gmt":"2015-12-14T02:11:31","slug":"debunking-the-big-short-how-michael-lewis-turned-the-real-villains-of-the-crisis-into-heros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2015\/12\/13\/debunking-the-big-short-how-michael-lewis-turned-the-real-villains-of-the-crisis-into-heros\/","title":{"rendered":"Debunking \u201cThe Big Short\u201d: How Michael Lewis Turned the Real Villains of the Crisis into Heros"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Naked Capitalism<\/em> has the article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2015\/12\/debunking-the-big-short-how-michael-lewis-turned-the-real-villains-of-the-crisis-into-heros.html?utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=email&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29\" target=\"_blank\">Debunking \u201cThe Big Short\u201d: How Michael Lewis Turned the Real Villains of the Crisis into Heros<\/a> by Yves Smith.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nI hate to give any attention to Michael Lewis\u2019 The Big Short, since the wildly popular book told a fundamentally misleading story of the crisis which sadly has become conventional wisdom. And it wasn\u2019t just harmlessly inaccurate; it directed public and even lawmaker attention away from the real drivers of this debacle.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If you are going to see the movie, you can read this article first to inoculate yourself from falling for the &#8220;heroes&#8221;, or you can watch the movie without reading the article to see if you can figure out for yourself that the &#8220;heroes&#8221; were really just as vallainous as the &#8220;villains&#8221; of the movie.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I am giving myself more credit than I deserve, but I remember coming away from the book with the thought, &#8220;Wait a minute, those guys that made out like bandits by taking down the insurance companies really were bandits.  Had poetic justice been served, they would have walked away with nothing, too.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You can see in just what way Michael Hudson&#8217;s explanation <a href=\"http:\/\/michael-hudson.com\/2012\/04\/debts-that-cant-be-paid-wont-be\/\" target=\"_blank\">Debts that can\u2019t be paid, won\u2019t be<\/a>.  It is the classic case of the 1% rigging the system so that they avoid being left holding the bag.  It could have been handled so that the 1% were left holding the bag they created, and the taxpayers were left with whatever real assets there were. In a true democracy, the 99% would have won.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Naked Capitalism has the article Debunking \u201cThe Big Short\u201d: How Michael Lewis Turned the Real Villains of the Crisis into Heros by Yves Smith. I hate to give any attention to Michael Lewis\u2019 The Big Short, since the wildly popular book told a fundamentally misleading story of the crisis which sadly has become conventional wisdom. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22141,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22140\/revisions\/22141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}