The financial system ground to a halt, and the economy went into a tailspin as the reverberations cascaded through the system: More homeowners lost jobs and stopped paying their mortgages, which caused more investment losses, and so on in a vicious cycle. Because so many investors had been gorging on these 'mortgage-backed securities,' their drop in value generating huge investment losses for major financial institutions, some of which went under, while those that survived all but stopped lending money. As a result, the bundles of mortgages (and bundles of bundles of mortgages) soon lost much of their value, too. Many of the underlying IOUs turned out to be pretty worthless because someone making $30,000 a year often can't pay a fat mortgage. Unfortunately, they were not safe at all. The banks then bundled all those mortgage IOUs into bonds and other more exotic securities and sold them to big-time investors, including pension and hedge funds, under the pretext that they were extremely safe investments. In a very, very small nutshell, the meltdown happened because banks were irresponsibly giving mortgages to people who couldn't afford them (and, in truth, probably shouldn't have taken them on). Here's a list of five things you should know before buying a ticket. But the movie is definitely enhanced by a little background information.

So the explanations pay off, and you can understand and enjoy 'The Big Short' on their strength alone. What's more, it's pretty clear that a lot of Wall Street's coma-inducing jargon and endless abbreviations-which have been known to flummox judges and put jurors to sleep-is actually part of an intentional strategy to separate otherwise reasonable people from their hard-earned cash. But let's face it, most of us didn't understand the financial crisis as it was going on, and many of us are still a little fuzzy about the specific mechanisms that nearly brought down the world economy. These interludes, though mildly amusing, are a bit disruptive to the story's dramatic effect. Instead, The Big Short breaks the fourth wall the plot is paused and various unexpected celebrities (who aren't even in the rest of the movie) address the camera to literally explain financial jargon and concepts essential to the story. We're not talking about the kind of incidental explanation that gets tucked into the story via implausibly encyclopedic dialogue á la Aaron Sorkin. (The movie opens in limited release on Friday, Dec. Anchorman auteur Adam McKay's new film The Big Short based on Michael Lewis's book about a handful of Wall Street sharps who made billions betting on the housing crisis, is filled with explanation.

The big short online