Daily Dialogue — May 30, 2018

Margot Robbie: [In a bubble bath with a glass of champagne] Basically, Lewis Ranieri’s mortgage bonds were amazingly profitable for the big banks. They made billions and billions on their 2% fee they got for selling each of 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 riskier and riskier mortgages. [Butler pours more champagne into her glass] Thank you, Benjamin. That way, they can keep that profit machine churning, alright? By the way, these risky mortgages are called “subprime.” So, whenever you hear the word “subprime,” think “shit.” Our friend, Michael Burry, found out that these mortgage bonds that were supposedly 65% AAA, were actually just, mostly, full of shit, so now, he’s going to “short” the bonds, which means “to bet against.” Got it? Good… [Takes a sip of champagne] Now, fuck off.

— The Big Short (2015), screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, based on the book by Michael Lewis

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Bank.

Trivia: The quotation that appears on screen, “‘Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.’ — Overheard at a Washington, D.C. bar,” was written by director and co-writer Adam McKay, after unsuccessfully searching for the perfect quotation to use for that segment.

Dialogue On Dialogue: While not set in a bank, Margot Robbie’s breaking the 4th wall explanation of how financial institutions made billions of subprime loans is instructive… and depressing.