The Big Short: A Tale of Fools and Crooks

I saw the movie last night. It’s a great flick. If anyone doubted that it was possible to make a humorous entertaining film about credit default swaps and collaterized debt obligations, the Big Short is the definitive answer to the question. But now let’s get to the substance.

Not surprisingly, the movie is prompting another round of revisionist accounts of the housing bubble. If you had not already guessed, the movie’s account is one in which the Wall Street boys ran wild and ended up drowni...