The fun thing about the mugs - he's not taking free mugs.... he's collecting trophies. He knows once the defaults happen, the mugs will probably be all that's left.

This crash detroyed our family. We lost our retail shop, we lost our home of 20 years, and we lost our construction company. We still havent recovered fully. Mom became suicidal and dad had to come out of retirement and work a fedex delivery job. I was stuck working odd jobs for years. A terrible time that destroyed everyone.

Definitely also worth watching Margin Call which tells the story from the perspective of an investment bank at the start of the financial crisis. Incredible cast with Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Zach Quinto, Demi Moore and others. Put together with The Big Short it really helps understand the whole 2008 crisis.

Mark Baum is based off Steve Eisman, whose personal life tragedy was changed for the movie. Instead of his brother commiting suicide, his baby son died after his nanny rolled on top of him during sleep. In the scene where Burry asks for the banks cups, apparently he was thinking the Banks would collapse so he thought they would be a cool souvenir/keepsake to have.

The 4th wall breaking is used in order to constantly pull the viewer out of just passively watching a movie and serves as a continual reminder that this really did happen and still needs to be addressed.

This isnt a movie about the economy. It's a horror movie. One of the scariest ever made.

One of my favorite examples of great writing happens in this movie: it explains to you how big a $15 billion exposure is not by weighing the script down with exposition, but just have Mark frame the question by asking '3? don't tell it's more than 4.' Just like that, you understand it's huge.

Steve Carell showed range in his acting, really liked his performance.

So incredibly well edited, George. Best reaction on KZfaq for this film now.

The incredible irony of the American Securitization Forum annual meeting that happens in Las Vegas always was the icing on the cake. This movie radicalized me.

I'm so glad you guys watched this. It's a scary movie and people unfortunately need to be aware that the banks are NOT on your side. I suggest y'all try "Margin Call" in the future.

Yeah, that was a dark period. My wife and I had a small business. We had 5 full time employees. We lost all of our clients but one. At one point in '08 an employee came to me and complained that we hadn't given her a raise in a year. I couldn't say anything to her at the time, but we only had about $250 left in our bank acct. We had to pay rent, pay bills etc. We blew through our savings almost immediately because we had virtually no revenue. But we always paid our employees. We never let anyone go. It was hard having to bite my tongue when this employee was ripping into me. I understood her need, but I admit it was hard to look her in the eye from then on. Early in Obama's presidency, he passed legislation that made getting a loan from the SBA almost automatic. We were afforded the loan, and were saved from bankruptcy in the short term. But the economic collapse was a gut punch and left psychological scars. First it was 9/11, then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then the economic collapse in 07/08. Excuse my language, but what a fucked up first decade of the millennium. The second decade hasn't improved any. I admit that it has all made me more guarded, more pessimistic and more distrusting of people and the institutions they create to manage the collective. I love this movie but it does bring back the cold sweats whenever I see parts of it.

I‘m from Germany and my Stepfather and my mother both lost their jobs and we lost our house. Fortunately we recovered after 4-5 years of true hardship, it was an awful time!

Now that you've seen The Big Short, you should definitely watch Margin Call as a companion film to this one - it's a look at the other side of the table, at what happened in that big empty bank office one day prior when everyone still had their jobs. An acting powerhouse, just incredible performances scene after scene after scene.

My parents moved from Colorado to Las Vegas because my stepfather is a Union electrician; the lists in Colorado were so backed up that he wouldn't have gotten a job here for years, and he was smart enough to keep himself on the lists in multiple states just in case, so he got to work on the one project in Vegas that didn't get canceled, the Aria. I moved in with them after dropping out of college, the strip was dead and empty; there were the skeletons of a half dozen uncompleted hotels throughout, old downtown was gross and unclean, and every fenced neighborhood was 70% empty. My uncles meanwhile had taken the plunge a few years before and opened their own construction company after two decades of working for other people, they went under and got into a fight so big that until pretty much five years ago when the eldest retired they still didn't talk to each other.

Margin Call is a great companion movie to this one if you haven't seen it. Absolute powerhouse of a film.

This is easily one of my top 5 favorite movies of all time. The humor, the teaching, the reality & the moral...you wouldn't expect it. "Spotlight" is a similar movie I'd recommend

I was in Vegas right after it. I saw some houses going for under 100k. Our cab driver was a realtor. There were Wall Street protests around the U.S. that unfortunately changed nothing. Canada was doing fine financially and got dragged into the recession like many other countries around the world.

'Inside Job' (2010) is a fantastic documentary, narrated by Matt Damon, that goes into detail about the whole mess.

I'm not a big Ryan Gosling fan, but I love his line reading of "I'M JACKED TO THE TITS!"

That question ..I immediately got flashbacks to my dad and I experiencing homelessness together, Sleeping in his car. Eating dinner from the vending machine at his job, showering at family’s houses. Eating expired bread we found when our cousin took us in and ripping the mold off. My dad being so proud, Where our cousin would make dinner and offer us to come up and he’d say no. And we’d eat cafeteria sandwiches he got from work

The sad part of this movie is that the banks are willing to do this all over again just using different terminology.

"Margin Call" and "Too Big To Fail" round out the 2008 financial crisis trilogy. Also "99 Homes" and "Inside Job" are a good watch to get an expanded view.

I was 22, and had just started my trucking company. Diesel was like 5 bucks a gallon. My older brother and his family's house was foreclosed on by Country Wide even though they had offers for a short sale, Country wide wouldn't accept and foreclosed. Other than that, most of my family was fine, and my brother and his family bounced back and are doing fantastic now...If you've ever watched a movie and then watched it again and picked up on things you missed the first time, the Big Short is one of those movies. Even though they really tried to keep it simple and explain everything, it's still a movie you almost have to watch again to catch it all and understand it all. I also think it's an extremely important movie for people to see and more importantly understand.

I was working my first post-college job when 2008 struck, and I was among the first wave of layoffs. Thankfully I had some family support, so I didn't end up homeless, but it was rough. Still is. Beginning of the end, from where I've been sitting.

I didn't personally notice it. My family was poor. We did own our land and house but it wasn't much. I just kept working delivering and recovering rent to own furniture. I finally quit that horrible business and on a whim joined the navy. That is when I saw the effects. So many people had joined the military that it started to push against the limits of how many recruits they could handle. By the time I was done with all my basic and advanced training there were people waiting 6 months or more just to get in an electronics class. This is bad because the Navy is now paying all these new people to sit around and sweep floors until they can be trained. It reminds me of my grandpa not really knowing the Great Depression was going on since they were poor as you could get. Just share croppers growing cotton and tobacco in Georgia. The middle class took the biggest hit from what I've seen.

My favorite quote from the movie: "Two plus two equals... FISH!"

Check out the movie Margin Call, it's about the same 2008 crash but from a banks perspective. Great film and has some excellent performances from Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons.

Thank you so much for doing this! I might be a bit of an outlier because I'm an economist and was in a major banking centre of the world learning finance industry security, but this is like p0rn to me. I could watch this every day. I don't know how many times I've watched this movie. For sure it's high praise when industry insiders love the movie about their industry instead of the usual which happens to other movies: insiders hating so many things ridiculously wrong in the movie. They got things right in this one, it was smart not to go in too deep into details, they sort of had different people _represent_ different institutions and characters. I literally know people exactly like almost every one of the characters in the movie...well, a few I've only known of from afar. And a few I've luckily not bumped into in those exact roles. I'm fortunate to not have mingled with insurance brokers. I rarely cry in movies but by the time they get to moving on from the insurance brokers I have tears in my eyes. (Not happy tears) (BTW the insurance brokers are doing wrong but they're not the worst people as they're simple salesmen just like most scammer-salesmen in all industries. They're the little guys you can't really blame...that much. The big guys want them to do exactly what they're doing, they set up the game for the little brokers exactly how they wanted them to act. Brokers do what they're allowed to do.)

Great movie!!! 👍😎👍 Ya'll should follow it up with "Margin Call". Ensemble cast dealing with the same subject but very zoomed in to a single firm.

Writing this before watching: In 2008 I was 17 and in school. And in Germany. The way it affected me personally was just that I saw stuff about it on the news and learned about it in Social and Economics class. Can't say that much of it stuck. I just remember that it started with a US real estate bubble bursting and granting loans to people who never should've got one. My family wasn't really affected and neither was my extented family. But I have to add there that my entire extended family is upper middle class, as were my friends' families. I don't think any of them were really badly affected. Also (I think) Germany made it through the crisis pretty well, a lot of countries were much worse off. So yeah, going into this one almost as blind as Simone, let's see if I remember school correctly. Edit after watching: I guess I remembered the gist of it. We never went into all the details, probably because we didn't know about it at the time. All those terrible consequences....we just didn't feel them in my socio-economic bubble in 2008 Germany. Sure we learned that something bad was going on with the world-wide economy but to me it was never close enough to encourage more than a general "Fuck those bankers" attitude.

The scene where Mark Baum shares about his brother gets me every time. As someone who works a lot and who has a brother in an emotionally draining job, I want to learn from Mark's mistakes (even though I think the story is modified from the book).

This film changed how I want to be as a writer. Adam McKay wrote and directed this at the time he was known for comedies and to see The Other Guys tackle real financial issues in the film but in a comedic way, I felt, was his way of getting his feet wet to dive into this subject matter. Ever since this film, his work has been on a more dramatic end. It just goes to show you can change horses midstream.

There's another movie about the crash called "margin call", a compelling watch about how the system makes sure it wins even when it loses.

Based on your appreciation of the writing in this and Moneyball, I highly recommend you watch Margin Call next. OutSTANDing cast and an impeccable screenplay.

Love this movie! I was involved in commercial real estate during this time and a restaurateur. 6 weeks before the s#*t hit the rotary device, I was able to sell my restaurant. Thank God! As a commercial realtor and business broker, I had several deals fall through because banks and other lenders had started to hold back or negate previously approved loans to potential buyers and those who wanted to lease. Keep up the great reactions!

I'm from Greece, so just like Brad Pitt says in the movie, we were done but our governments still pretend we're not.

I was very young at the time, almost a teenager, so I personally didn't understand the effects, but felt them. My stepdad's mood changed. Luckily, he bought the house a few years before this. He was into these home projects, gardening, the like. In 2008, it just stopped. He was working longer hours, yet getting less clients. My mom was working odd hours at this point. Tensions were high and eventually a divorce (there were other personal reasons of course). My best friend in the neighborhood moved out of city, yet his parents owned a business close by. I went to the most underfunded school in the area. A lot of my friends were just gone. It was so quiet.

I'M SO GLAD YOU GUYS WATCHED THIS! I'm that one person on Patreon that kept suggesting it. :D It's such a unique blend of education and comedy, and with such an incredible ensemble cast. And yeah...it's also depressing and frustrating. I agree with other people here; Margin Call would be an EXCELLENT companion piece for this. To answer George's question at the beginning: the entire local branch of the company I worked for dissolved and I was unemployed for 1.75 years before crawling back to contract game testing because I couldn't get anything else. I was living with my parents again for a few years. I felt like I was starting over adulthood from scratch. The silver lining was that I eventually got a foot in the door for the career I now have, but it was really hard for several years.

This movie and "Margin Call" goes excellent with each other

I have been dying for you guys to react to this movie for ages so when I saw the thumbnail I was very excited. This is a great reaction to an amazing and horrific movie. Thank you.

I was "lucky" during the 2008 collapse. I was young-ish (29), didn't own a home or anything, and had a very unimportant IT job with one of the state governments here in the U.S. The job didn't pay a lot, but it was stable, and had good benefits. I may have left that job for greener pastures, but for a couple of years there...there were no greener pastures. I have a lot of friends who really struggled during that time, stringing together contract gigs for a few months at a time (at most), with no real security. And they were the lucky ones, because even though it wasn't easy, they could still keep a roof over their head.

The screenwriters for some reason changed Steve Eisman's name to "Mark Baum" for Steve Carrell's character here. And as hard as it may be to fathom, they thought that if they didn't change the personal tragedy that he and his wife endured, it would derail the movie -- it's that horrific.

"Margin Call" is the same story but different. Wonderful acting. Really good movie.

It bothers me deeply that not many people understand what happened. It’s not as complicated as it’s made to seem, not at its roots. And you don’t have to understand every corner of it to get the idea of what happened. But understanding what happened gives people a better idea of the world they live in.

I just turned 6 around the time the financial crisis started in 2007, I vaguely remember anything concrete, but I do remember I started getting hand me downs from the neighbor’s kid from 2008-2012ish, we started buying a lot more food in bulk and spreading it out over long periods of time, like multiple 50lb bags of rice in a closet. A bunch of our teachers got laid off due to budget cuts. It was a sad time

I feel like this movie has just the right amount of lighthearted content to address such a touchy and complicated subject.

I remember driving to work Sept 2008 and the news came on the radio to announce Lehman Brothers had folded. I knew at that very moment that the world had changed and we were in for a rough time.

I joined the military in 2008. The amount of people who came in shortly after due to losing their houses and jobs was nuts. Right around the time of the surge in Afghanistan.

We're still living it. Councils have been underfunded for 16 years are now starting to run out of money and going bankrupt. It used to be called austerity, but that makes it sound like it should only be temporary, except so far it's lasted 16 years and seems to be getting worse not better. So far it's affected at last 1 generation, maybe more to come. bummer.. now here's Carol with the weather. Wall Street film is also good btw :)

Marissa Tormei's facial expressions, when she realises Marc Baum has switched to talking about his brother is sooo heartbreaking. 21:40

A great follow up to this would be "Margin Call" which shows in closer detail what companies actually did to trigger the collapse. Great Writing and a star cast.

The financial crisis hit a few years into my first job after college. As a young person with a well paying job who was looking to buy a starter house back then, I saw how absurd the affordability issue was, and I watched home prices just keep going up. I got pitched all the zero down, adjustable rate, negative amortization loans there were. I knew it was all a bunch of shit, and prices had to crash. I was able to short home builders and financial stocks through the ETFs SKF and SRS, but I didnt have a whole lot of money to make anything significant. In the end, when the government bailed all the banks out, my positions got crushed and I ended the whole fiasco with no gain or loss, but I did learn a very big life lesson in how to buy and sell stocks

So happy this is finally making the rounds in the reaction community. As an autistic stock trader myself, I fully relate to Michael Burry's anti-social, heavy metal-loving, awkward persona. His speech at the end about this business killing the part of life that is essential is on point, as everything about life is reduced to numbers on a screen. My dream is to one day take all the money I've made staring into the abyss of the market and use it for some humanitarian benefit. Edit: I actually missed the housing crisis entirely because I was fighting in Iraq from 06 to 09, so that whole thing passed us by.

This is a great movie, up there with Moneyball for a film about a subject I knew nothing about previously but came away from feeling both informed, amused and infuriated.

This is simply one of my favorite movies. I loved how you two appreciated the well executed balance of difficult information with comedy. Truly makes the movie palletable and allows me to recommend it to anyone.

Yes, Margin Call is also a good movie about the 2007 housing crash. In 2007 I was working at a large insurance company that had a lot of mortgage backed securities on their books. I left just before the mortgage crisis and that company took a huge hit when those bonds failed. Most of the people I worked with were gone in a year and the company itself downsized drastically. I remember how confident everyone who traded securities were about how secure their jobs were , bragging about the big houses they had and the expensive cars they drove. I left because the corporate culture there was really turning toxic and I just had had enough. But even so a lot of my work friends suffered in the collapse and had to move to find a new job or lost their houses.

Was close to turning 30, and it was a time in life then where you expected to start getting a little ahead and established financially based on how everything had been and how we were raised. Then everything crashed. Most of my social group had either started to catch up on student loans from bad degrees they'd been encouraged to get, because if you didn't go to college you'd be a failure according to counselors, and the ones that didn't go to college had enough work experience and skills to have started making good incomes. There was an idea at the time that everyone should have a house, even if you couldn't really afford one. Didn't understand how that would work, but before the crash was an easy way to make money. I was working with a friend to flip houses when the crash happened. That friend is still living in the house we were flipping then. The same thing has been going on with the used car market for almost a decade now, and continues to get worse, but massive interest rate loans and car repos don't get as much attention as homes.

The 88th Academy Awards was such a great year for Best Picture nominations. Not one picture didn't deserve recognition in some way. "Spotlight" needs to be on your must-watch list as well. As for The Big Short, it balanced the 2008 crisis with fantastic storytelling, direction, education, comedy, mostly factual history, and great acting. Awesome movie that is far better than the credit it gets IMHO.

The reason he was collecting mugs is because he knew there was a huge chance all those firms would disappear after the crash (most indeed did) so he took a souvenir of the soon to be dead firms. He was collecting trophies of his hunt.

My wife and I were lucky enough to keep our jobs during all of this. Around this time we decided to refinance our home. Our loan officer lived in our neighborhood and at the time tried to talk us out of a conventional loan (15,30 yr) and into an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) which was an even lower interest rate but much riskier longer term. When we said no his response was “come on all of your neighbors are doing it”. Our thought was it seemed too good to be true and our neighbors were mostly idiots. They were bragging to everyone about getting a loan on stated income alone. One of the best decisions we ever made was to stay with the conventional loan. A whole bunch of people in that neighborhood lost their homes to foreclosure, including the loan agent.

I was in college during this time, while nobody I knew was directly devastated like many people, we all felt the pinch. Probably the biggest catalyst for my radicalization, as prior to that I was closer to a centrist. Ended up marching in Boston as part of Occupy.

One of my favorite movies is the one that looks at this from the other side, from the inside of the I-bank that finally realized the crash was inevitable, and what they did on the night their analysts discovered this (and day after) that started the October 2008 sell-offs. It's called "Margin Call", and there are about 5 or 6 actors in that movie that could have legitimately won the Academy Award for their performances, one of the best-acted movies of all-time. It's not Lehman, they were already dead when this happened (they went Chapter 7 back on September 15), this bank actually survived intact because they were the first to dump.

This was such a fun, great way of explaining a complicated subject to people while keeping them entertained. Hard not to take notice when Margot's scene comes on.

I was around 9 years old when the financial crisis hit, i lived in a nice home with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms a nice kitchen with a marble countertop and a big backyard and garage. Eventually we lost the house, my parents got divorced and ive been living apartment to apartment ever since at the age of 24

I was lucky in 2008. My job is essentially recession proof. This movie is absolutely hilarious. And pretty scary

I remember a podcaster described The Big Short in the perfect way. Basically “have you ever been so mad at someone that you can’t even argue with them anymore, so you just repeat what they say in a stupid voice? That’s what The Big Short feels like to me”

Along with "Too Big to Fail", this is one of my favorite realistic modern horror films. All the monsters win.

The portrayals of the real characters are surprisingly realistic. Christian Bale met the real Michael Bury and even borrowed oms of his clothes and wore them.

This is one of those movies that gets under my skin. The greed of those bankers, who didn't care is something out of this world. I try not to wish ill will to anybody but I have no sympathy for any of those politicians, lobbyists or bankers who knew what was gonna happen and did nothing. Sorry for the rant. This movie is something else.😁

George’s “previous work in Vegas” sounds verrrrry interesting 😂

I watched this unfold in slow motion as I'm plugged in to the news. I had to leave university, move home, and finally got a job at Walmart after being unemployed for two years. I was lucky, and got in a new store that had just been expanded, and where I ended up was the only county in the entirety of Ontario (and the whole of Canada east of Alberta) that actually had businesses hiring. Most of my coworkers had lost their 20-30 year jobs in factories that had shut down.

I was a month away from getting married when this happened. I was laid off the week before christmas, and unemployed for the ceremony. That was one of the worst and best times of my life, all rolled into one. I'm a Xennial, and it just seems like my generation keeps getting hit by crisis after crisis every few years. Eat the rich, bring on the guillotines, they have forgotten why they should fear the people.

25:58 -- "i wonder if the actual people are in this movie playing other roles" Michael Burry cameos as a Scion employee

Reading all the stories in these replies. Most disaster movies, the survivors wake up the day after to the sun rising, put everything back together, and hug their families. This one shattered people. It shattered families. It left them shattered. For decades. And the people responsible were rewarded for it. Simone being livid beyond words, what a perfect reaction.

This is incredibly light humoured look at the situation, but i recommend watching another movie about it which is purely dramatic and it’s brilliant, called Margin Call. It’s phenomenal.

The craziest part of it all is that my family lost their savings because of this and then we, the taxpayers, then bailed out the banks 🙃

I'm from Zimbabwe. When the events of this movie took place, our economy was already in a death spiral due to bad governance. By '07, our currency was all but useless; supermarkets and grocery stores only had toilet paper and nothing else. However, 2007-08 was the worst and still is the lowest point in the history of the country's economy. I had always wondered why 2007-08 was so especially bad until I watched this movie. Very few countries on Earth were spared the effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Because we were already going through our own economic depression, we barely noticed when the GFC started but eventually we felt it halfway across the world. Hence, seeing how the crisis-affected people in the USA is quite interesting and sad.

You guys should check out Margin Call. It's a fictional but realistic look at a similar financial collapse with an all-star cast that is also infuriating but mesmerizing.

I was in my early twenties when this all went down. When people ask why I don't own a home or have kids or investments, I point to this film. Watching my family and my friend's families go through this - losing their jobs, losing their homes, even a few suicides for good measure, etc. - put me off the rat race and trying to be middle class. Nowadays, I don't have much but I am secure and what I do have is mine.

Too Big To Fail is another good film about the collapse, though its timeline is after everything was hitting the fan and the banks were trying to hide it (starts in early 2008). William Hurt plays Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and there's a stacked cast.

I worked for title insurance company and closed a lot of subprime mortgages from 2004-2006. The mortgage brokers’ attitudes in the movie were pretty accurate to actual brokers. It was a crazy time.

Brilliant movie, changes nothing. The sound of history repeating.

You should really watch "Margin Call" now - it's a snippet of one night at one of the banks when the crash happened - amazing cast!

I graduated from college in 2008 with a degree in Computer Engineering. During this collapse the amount of jobs in my field that were outsourced was staggeringly high. I was going to job fairs at 21 years old competing for entry level positions that remained against 40 year old people. I ended up just finding a local place where friends worked and did data entry to make a living. I ended up staying with that company for 14 years until they laid me off. I now work for a similar company that I'm enjoying, but can't help think that my entire career trajectory is due to this event, for better or for worse. I now work in ETL/ Data Analytics/ Dashboard and Reporting, I wonder where I would be if none of the events of this movie happened. I also realize how lucky I am that I still ended up where I am compared to a lot of others.

I was out of work for 4 years. They were very hard times.

Of course they're doing it again, when you control enough capital you make money from the highs and the lows. All those properties that people lost didn't disappear they were repossessed then sold again for profit. Business were hoovered up for pennies on the dollar and added to portfolios or sold off. My parents owned a small hotel, the bank screwed them over withdrawing an agreed loan during the crisis forcing them to sell. The occupy wall street movement was a step in the right direction but didn't go far enough.

From one with an Economics and hedge fund background ...the kindest thing I can say about this film, which is enjoyable, regarding its accuracy? This movie incorrectly repeats the debunked causes of the Financial Crash, promoted by Leftists. People ignorant of the financial system, or those unfamiliar with the basic hard science of Economics. The real causes of the crash: 1 - The Federal Reserve - mispricing the cost of money 2 - The Federal government - The Community Reinvestment Act. Which requires banks to loan to non-credit worthy people, if they're not White or Asian. 3 - The rating agencies rubber stamping complex derivative products, containing a range of product qualities ...as uniformly, high grade.

Simone representing the right characters in the thumbnails

Christian Bale's performance of Michael Burry is spot on, Michael Burry is the genius trader this is socially awkward he act's exactly how Christian Bale performs for his character

Christian Bale claims to have NEVER gone to the gym before American Psycho and he was in incredible shape for that character.

I was a mortgage processor in 2000-2003 and then worked for some small mortgage companies until 2005. It was not a secret, everyone knew what was going on and that it would end badly. We just did not know when or how it would end.

I worked as a customer service trainer at a mortgage servicing company a few years ago. When I could, I always made my classes watch this movie because it does a really good job of explaining a lot of the background and why some of the laws now exist that mortgage companies need to be aware of. Great movie.

I’ve been looking forward to this! I think George is going to enjoy the numbers!

Margin Call was another good movie about this that came out around the same time. I guess it's like every disaster movie - there always has to be two competing ones that come out almost simultaneously.

I remember that .. I moved to England in 2008, just before the collapse. My mother had an anualty (sp) with everything she had saved her entire life in it.. around 80K, in 2008 she hemoraged, it dropped to about 50K USD, she was crying her eyes out thinking everything would be lost, and if it hadn't been for the bailout she would of lost it all. I told her to hold, wait, and that it would recover.. thankfully she listened, and it did because of the bailout for the banks.. they got rich, CEO's got massive bonuses, we all were outragged.. but eventually it climbed again. She's over her original savings, but not nearly as much as she should of been without the crash. But enough to where she stopped wanting to kill herself every week. So there's that...

Great reaction and I get your frustration with the system. My wife and I used to post-date checks to pay bills and prayed they didn't get cashed all at the same time. Our first time filing taxes as a married couple nearly killed us financially. We went back to our apartment and made hot dogs (the only thing we could afford). Every year after that we referred to any financial situations, like the housing collapse, as a hot dog or non-hot dog days. Flash forward a couple of years and we discovered Dave Ramsey and our lives have completely turned around. I highly recommend him not for his sparkling personality, but because his program flat out works.

Luckily I didn't know anybody affected by the 2008 crisis, but it made me realize how little I paid attention to economic news up to that point. I watched a few Frontline episodes on PBS dissecting the crisis, and one of them included an audio clip of the guy Steve Carell's character was based on calling BS at that Las Vegas meeting, just as Ryan Gosling's characters pointed out @18:15.

My dad lost his tech job around this time and was unemployed for a couple of years. I was in college then and when I came home for the summer, I couldn't get hired at any of the 40+ fast food or chain restaurants I applied to because they were already filled with all the people who had lost their 9-5 office jobs. I never connected the dots as to why all this happened until much later.

I’ve been waiting for you guys to do this one, especially given George’s love of data and competent people being competent! One of my favorites, though I can only watch it every so often because it’s so upsetting.