Who here watched "Too Big to Fail" on HBO - great movie **spoilers**

I thought it was pretty well balanced and amazing cast. I suspect that William Hurt is going to win a few awards for his role of Henry Paulson and Paul Giamatti was dead-on as Fed Chairman Bernake.

I thought there was some interesting things brought to light during the movie, made a few things even more clear to me from watching it. Like just how bad that guy from Lehman Brothers screwed things up. He let his ego get into the way and instead of making the deal early on, he allowed the company to die a painful death, which created more havoc in the long run. I still wonder if the government had done a Bear-Sterns deal with Lehman if we could have averted some of the disaster back then.

I loved the ending of the movie and found alot of irony in it. I think that Paulson and his group almost did the right thing with the TARP, but the ending was perfect when Paulson along with his staff wondered if they could have done more and hoped that the Banks would do the right thing with the money they had received. Fade to black and then you had the end notes, what happened in the aftermath including the fact that $137million in compensation was spent by these bank leaders.

What were your thoughts on the movie?

...that it was put out to present Paulson, Geithner and the others as sympathetic figures when in fact they are bloodsuckers. I don't think you're going to get a lot of agreement on your opinion here.

The cast was stupendous. The step by step unravelling and efforts to stop it made for good drama. I agree that Paulson, Bernanke et al did about as well as they could under the circumstances, and I think the show is fair in its portrayal of their efforts.
What infuriates me is the back story....how we got into the mess in the first place....the greed, arrogance and stupidity that was legitimized in the Reagan era and just kept getting worse....I think the show hinted at it in its portrayal of all those smart bankers in their hand-tailored suits....but it really didn't get into the nuts and bolts of our national financial idiocy. That's too big a story to tell in a 99 minute teleplay. I'm just hoping that "Too Big to Fail" starts people thinking.

The fact that he could have resolved it with the first offer made to him by the Koreans but backed away because he was going to lose millions - that just infuriated me. I think James Woods was portraying more than just the arrogance of the character he portrayed but of all the bankers who were indignant that they would be held accountable for their stupidity. I mean it's a 2 hour show, so there were limitations.

But I think in the end when the guy from Merrill Lynch, the one played by Matthew Modine, questioned about their compensation package - well that just spoke volumes. His ass was being saved and all he cared was him and his cronies making money.