Movie: "Revolutionary Road"
Review: 1 bill-star (out of 5)... really really bad

What a train wreck:
  • Bad acting... shoot, I like Leo and Winslet, but they have no chemistry in this one. There's lots of yelling and fake hysteria. Nearly ever performance in the thing seemed stilted.
  • Bad directing... no way this looked or felt like the 1950's. It looked like the 21st century with cool 50's cars driving around and everyone smoking in every scene. "Look, I'm smoking... I must be from the 50's!" Huh?
  • Bad screenplay... they commit the cardinal sin: boring! Flat as a pancake.
  • Bad book... I think I gave the book 3 stars, but a lot of that was in appreciation of the writing style. A book/movie hitting us over the head about the cliche of marriage and suburbia in the 50's is itself cliche by now. I found out (IMDB) that director Sam Mendes also did "American Beauty" which had a similar (boring) theme but was at least mildly entertaining.
I had this urge to give Rev Road 2 stars. I don't know why. I guess because I had higher expectations, and it's gotten pretty good reviews. The book wasn't this bad. I don't want to be too cranky. Whatever. I got over it. That was a boring, bad movie, so F it.

On a more exciting note... why the financial meltdown?
This guy lists another guy's 6 reasons: Six Ideological Errors That Led to Financial Crisis

I think that list is OK... here's my ranking in order of importance:
  1. Sky-high leverage - Who knew that banks were leveraged 30:1. That's about the dumbest thing I ever heard. If banks and investment houses weren't torqued up 30:1, we'd be having a normal recession/correction, right? Isn't this the most obvious thing to come out of this whole mess?!?!
  2. Sub-prime surge - This is a pretty cool and viscous little cycle of bad lending: a) cheap money from the Fed... to keep the economy cranking, b) lenders pushed by the feds (Fannie/Freddie)... to give lower-income buyers a chance to own a home, c) borrowers accepting the deal... hey, a no down-payment house sounds great, d) belief that housing prices will keep rising... a classic bubble, e) everyone from Wall Street to mortgage companies to mortgage brokers making money... making money is good, and f) The lending model changed; banks no longer kept their loans and Wall Street, armed with 30:1 leverage began buying them... bad risk models (hello former Master-of-the-Universe Robert Rubin of Citi) justified the shift and the incredible leveraging.
  3. Wild derivatives - CDO's and CDS's and all kind of esoteric acronyms. If things are too complex too understand, then they're probably too complex to risk-evaluate.
  4. Foreclosures - Well, this is a weaker point, but it does add to the general malaise of the country. Also, it adds supply to the housing market and drives down everyone's prices. But this is probably a necessary step t get back to reality.
  5. Tarp's detour - I don't buy this one at all. If we get out of this with a nasty recession, then history will be extremely kind to Bernanke and Paulson, I think.
  6. Letting Lehman fail - I don't buy this one at all.
He leaves out cheap money for too long from Alan Greenspan's Fed. I'd out this at maybe #3/#4 in my list. You can't have as big a bubble without access to the cash, eh.

QOTD
"No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women"
- Ronald Reagan
My Obama-fueled media blackout continues. Ah, the bubble (he he).
I had one small leak in my bubble when I woke up to the clock radio, and in like 30 seconds I heard some (radioactive) voice compare Obama's inaugural address to Reagan's. Ugh. I patched this tiny breach with a slap of my snooze button. Victory!
freedom... yow, bill


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