http://www.hbo.com/bin/hboPlayerV2.swf?vid=1175400
I just watched HBO’s Too Big to Fail and I have to say that, dramatically, it lives up to the hype. The story moves along at a brisk pace and the star-studded cast turns in a collection of powerful performances.
And yet, Too Big to Fail fails in the same way that historical recreations often fail: It simplifies the 2008 financial disaster, turns a massive systemic derailment into a story of individuals. Hank Paulson and Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke and the leaders of the big banks and investment houses — these are the players, the decision-makers and the men (almost exclusively) who nearly drove the nation off a cliff and then, at the last minute, righted it.
This makes for great cinema and storytelling, but it is lousy history. The 2008 financial crisis had far deeper roots than the film implies. They go far deeper than just the Clinton-era financial reforms that turned the Street into a casino, deeper than the deregulatory mania of the Carter and Reagan years. The problem is capitalism itself, which is prone to boom-and-bust cycles and demands profits at all costs.
Too Big to Fail is, in the end, insider baseball, the story of how Washington insiders averted a crisis of their own making.
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Hank Kalet 