Asked by the Hollywood Reporter why he wanted to make the Wall Street-bashing flick, “The Big Short,” writer-director Adam McKay said he had no political agenda. “As far as having a political or policy position to it,” he claimed, “I never really looked at it that way.”
Give me a break.
McKay is actively backing socialist Bernie Sanders’ bid for president, a campaign whose success rides on convincing voters big Wall Street bankers caused the financial crisis — and practically every other societal woe — and that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is in their back pocket.
“The Big Short” is a two-hour political campaign ad for Sanders, repeatedly echoing his mantra that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud.” It should be disclosed to election authorities as a $28 million gift-in-kind to Sanders, along with McKay’s thousands of dollars in personal donations.
According to federal records, McKay was an early supporter of Sanders’ White House run, contributing the maximum individual donation of $2,700 to his primary campaign. His director wife, Shira Piven, kicked in another $2,700. Hillary, in contrast, has received not a penny from either of these Sanderistas, not even in 2012.
What’s more, Sanders has listed the couple among Hollywood elite who signed a letter officially endorsing the Marxist curmudgeon for president.
“Bernie Sanders is the only candidate speaking against the widespread legalized corruption that has handed our government to billionaires, large corporations and banks,” McKay explained in a statement released by the Sanders campaign. Unlike Hillary, he notes, Sanders isn’t taking money from the banks.
Last month, his wife retweeted a Sanders harangue against “Big Banks,” which McKay hopes Sanders will break up and punish with a massive Wall Street “transaction tax.”
Despite its profanity laced one-liners, his movie is leftist political propaganda posing as entertainment. McKay’s goal is to convince the public, through Hollywood wizardry, that the entire American financial system is irredeemably venal, and must be taken over by government, which McKay trusts unblinkingly as a “positive force.”
But what he can’t see, or rather refuses to see, is government’s own role in the mortgage crisis and misery of millions.
Two of the worst actors in the crisis were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled, Treasury-backed mortgage giants who, from the start of the subprime bubble in 1997 to its bursting in 2007, acquired a combined $1.5 trillion in loans with subprime credit scores and another $2.2 trillion in subprime securities.
When the real-estate market finally crashed, Fannie and Freddie held in portfolio roughly half the 27 million shoddy mortgages outstanding, and far more than the combined holdings of the Wall Street banks “Big Short” demonizes.
Why would Fannie and Freddie back so many junk loans? To satisfy government regulators, who kept raising their “affordable housing” loan purchase requirements for low-income borrowers with bad credit. Starting under Clinton, HUD let them count subprime securities toward their goals.
But that meant slashing underwriting and down-payment standards. By 2006, Fannie was warning shareholders about losses from such risky political loans. The next year, then-Fannie CEO Daniel Mudd fired off a letter to HUD complaining of defaults on “goals-rich loans,” and warning it had “relaxed underwriting standards in an effort to meet the housing goals.” More defaults followed, which ultimately caused Fannie’s bankruptcy. Freddie collapsed along with it.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged six top executives of Fannie and Freddie with securities fraud, saying they knowingly lied about their exposure to subprime loans (while misleading the ratings agencies “Big Short” also vilifies).
“The Big Short” only faults the government for bailing out the big banks. But guess who got the biggest bailouts of all? Fannie and Freddie. Yet they get a complete pass in the film.
Why the whitewash? Because Fannie and Freddie are the sacred cows of the left. Through their government-mandated “affordable housing mission,” they provide the easy home loans for minorities and poor people. Only it wasn’t the banks who cost them their homes. It was liberal government housing policy.
““The Big Short” is a two-hour political campaign ad for Sanders, repeatedly echoing his mantra that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud.””
As “The Big Short” gets Oscar buzz, will Hollywood question — or even mention — the film’s huge omissions? Of course not. While “American Sniper” was “controversial” because it dared show the military in a heroic role, “The Big Short” will get a pass because it’s exactly what liberals want to hear. It’s only controversial if it’s conservative.
Democrat pundits love to complain about how big-pocketed donors supposedly tilt elections, but they never mention the way Hollywood has become their most powerful political weapon — by pushing particular agendas under the guise of popular culture.
Adam McKay knows one film is worth 1 million campaign ads for Bernie Sanders, without violating one election law. And if it helps cement a lie in the minds of America, so much the better.
Paul Sperry is a visiting Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “The Great American Bank Robbery:The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Great Recession.”