The Big Short : le Casse du siècle

Three separate but parallel stories of the mid 2000s mortgage housing crisis in the US are told. It's 2005. Eccentric ex-physician turned one-eyed Scion Capital hedge fund manager Michael Burry, who tosses traditional office attire for shorts, bare feet and a Supercuts haircut, believes, based on research, that the US housing market is built on a bubble that will burst within the next few years. Having autonomy within the company to do largely as he pleases, Michael proceeds to bet against the housing market with the banks, who are more than happy to accept his proposal for something that has never happened in American history, they believing in the process that Michael is a crackpot and they are a sure very lucrative winner in the deal. Jared Vennett with Deutschebank gets wind of what Burry is doing and, as an investor himself, believes he too can cash in on Burry's beliefs. An errant telephone call to FrontPoint Partners gets this information into the hands of Mark Baum, an ...