The Big Short

New York in 2005: The dollar is strong, the economy is booming. On Wall Street, stock and securities transactions are conducted on a gigantic scale every day. With increasingly complex real estate products, excellent returns, and seemingly minimal risk, even the unemployed become villa owners, while brokers, insurers, and bank executives are lured by quick money.

What the financial moguls, the media, and the government fail to see, the unconventional hedge fund manager Michael Burry immediately understands: he predicts the bursting of the American real estate bubble in just a few years and the resulting collapse of the global economy, which will leave millions homeless and jobless. When Burry warns of the impending disaster, no one wants to listen to him—bank executives feel too secure and dismiss his predictions. In response, Burry devises a cunning plan: the "Big Short." Through so-called "shorting," or betting against the stocks of major investment banks, he collaborates with other risk-taking speculators, such as the unyielding trader Steve Eisman, the money-hungry Deutsche Bank broker Greg Lippmann, and former star investor Ben Rickert, to bet against the financial system in order to make unimaginable profits. The disaster and absolute madness beyond all moral boundaries has begun...