Big Short

1.  Wall Street collapses because the housing market crashed. The housing market crashed because it was overinflated by risky, sub-prime mortgages. Essentially, the housing market was propped up on bad loans and crashed, causing wide-spread bank insolvency and a massive economic recession. One of the reasons why sub-prime mortgages were so prevalent was because of collateralized debt obligation, where "unsellable" bonds were repackaged into a collective and resold at a new, overestimated rating.

2.  Collateralized debt obligation--where ratings agencies overrated sub-prime, risky bonds, thus selling off packages of bonds that would otherwise be unsellable. Eventually, a large quantity of these unsellable, risky bonds made their way into  mortgage-backed securities portfolios, undermining the market as a whole. Moreover, the entities selling the sub-prime loans without thought of consequence shared some liability as well.

3.  Rating agencies give ratings that denote the risk associated with a given loan. This rating is based on the probability that the loan applicant will default. Rating agencies overrated the sub-prime mortgages, leading people to underestimate their risk, which contributed to the housing market's inflation and eventual collapse.

4.  The outsiders foresaw it because they actually looked at the individual mortgages and saw that they were much riskier than commonly believed, and that there would be a much higher default rate than expected. 

5.  They were bailed out by the tax-payers, scot-free. Only one banker was sentenced to jail time.

6.  My favorite part of the movie was when Mark was speaking against the bullish investor. I found that part to be insightful as well as moving. Mark, as a consequence of his passion and moral fortitude, was my favorite character.

7.  I think they did a great job; they included lots of information that might not traditionally be considered entertaining for the sake of teaching. They explained things in a palatable, but seemingly accurate, manner.

8. I wish they explained more about how these people got off so easily; I would like to know what could possibly prevent government entities from rectifying their actions. Obviously I have some idea, but I'd like to know more about what exactly went wrong there.