Margin Call 2011 quotes

John Tuld

So, what you're telling me is that the music is about to stop, and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of … capitalism.

Peter Sullivan

Sir, I'm not sure that I would put it that way. But let me clarify: using your analogy, what this model shows is the music, so to speak, just slowing. If the music were to stop, as you put it, then this model wouldn't be even close to that scenario. It would be considerably worse.

John Tuld

Let me tell you something, Mr. Sullivan. Do you care to know why I'm in this chair with you all? I mean, why I earn the big bucks?

Peter Sullivan

Yes.

John Tuld

I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I'm afraid that I don't hear—a—thing. Just … silence.

John Tuld

Sam, I don't think you seem to understand what your boy here has just said.

John Tuld

If I made you do it, how would you do this?

Sam Rogers

You call the traders in for their normal meet, because they're going to know it's the end either way.

Sam Rogers

You're going to have to throw them a bone, and a pretty big one.

Sam Rogers

And then you've got to come out of the gates storming. No swaps. No nothing.

John Tuld

So, you're telling me that all your trades have to be gone because by lunchtime, huh?

John Tuld

Since when you have you gotten so soft?

Sam Rogers

**** you, soft. You're panicking.

John Tuld

If you're first out the door, that's not called panicking.

John Tuld

So, what you're telling me is that the music is about to stop and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of capitalism.

Peter Sullivan

Sir, I'm not sure that I would put it that way. But let me clarify.

Peter Sullivan

Using your analogy, what this model shows is the music, so to speak, just slowing.

Peter Sullivan

If the music were to stop, as you put it, then this model wouldn't be even close to that scenario.

Peter Sullivan

Will? Did you really make two and a half million last year?

Will Emerson

Yeah, sure.

Peter Sullivan

How did you spend it all?

Will Emerson

It goes quite quickly. You know, you learn to spend what's in your pocket.

Seth Bregman

Two and a half million goes quickly?

Will Emerson

All right, let's see. So the taxman takes half up front, so you're left with one and a quarter. My mortgage takes another 300 grand. I send 150 home for my parents, you know, keep them going. So what's that?

Peter Sullivan

800.

Will Emerson

All right, 800. Spent 150 on a car. About 75 on restaurants. Probably 50 on clothes. I put 400 away for a rainy day.

Seth Bregman

That's smart.

Will Emerson

Yeah, as it turns out, 'cause it looks like the storm's coming.

Peter Sullivan

You still got 125.

Will Emerson

Yeah, well, I did spend $76,520 on hookers, booze, and dancers. But mainly hookers.

Peter Sullivan

76.5?

Will Emerson

I was a little shocked initially, but then I realized that I could claim most of it back as entertainment. It's true.

Peter Sullivan

Are you sure it's the only or the right thing to do?

Sam Rogers

For whom?

Peter Sullivan

I'm not sure.

Sam Rogers

Neither am I.

Sam Rogers

The real question is: who are we selling this to?

John Tuld

The same people we've been selling it to for the last two years, and whoever else would buy it.

Sam Rogers

But John, if you do this, you will kill the market for years. It's over.

Sam Rogers

And you're selling something that you know has no value.

John Tuld

We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price.

John Tuld

So that we may survive.

Sam Rogers

You would never sell anything to any of those people ever again.

John Tuld

I understand.

Sam Rogers

Do you?

John Tuld

Do you? [pounding on the desk] This is it! I'm telling you this is it!

Sarah Robertson

But is this your draft?

Peter Sullivan

Yes. Again, expanded on the original work by Mr. Dale. But, yes.

Sarah Robertson

What's your background?

Peter Sullivan

My background?

Sarah Robertson

Your CV.

Peter Sullivan

I've been with the firm for two and a half years, working with Eric that whole time. But I hold a doctorate in engineering, specialty in propulsion, from MIT with a bachelor's from Penn.

Jared Cohen

What is a specialty in propulsion, exactly?

Peter Sullivan

My thesis was studying the ways that friction ratios affect steering outcomes in aeronautical use under reduced gravity loads.

Jared Cohen

So, you're a rocket scientist?

Peter Sullivan

I was. Yeah.

Jared Cohen

Interesting. How did you end up here?

Peter Sullivan

Well, it's all just numbers really. Just changing what you're adding up and, to speak freely, the money here is considerably more attractive.

Will Emerson

Listen, nothing I'm gonna say is going to make you feel any better. It's just going to suck for a while, and then you'll be fine.

Eric Dale

Do you know I built a bridge once? ... I was an engineer by trade... It went from Dilles Bottom, Ohio to Moundsville, West Virginia. It spanned nine hundred and twelve feet above the Ohio River. Twelve thousand people used this thing a day. And it cut out thirty-five miles of driving each way between Wheeling and New Martinsville. That's a combined 847,000 miles of driving a day. Or 25,410,000 miles a month. And 304,920,000 miles a year. Saved. Now I completed that project in 1986, that's twenty-two years ago. So over the life of that one bridge, that's 6,708,240,000 miles that haven't had to be driven. At, what, let's say fifty miles an hour. So that's, what, 134,165,800 hours, or 559,020 days. So that one little bridge has saved the people of those communities a combined 1,531 years of their lives not wasted in a **** car. One thousand five hundred and thirty-one years.

Will Emerson

Don't beat yourself up on this, Eric. Some people like taking the long way home. Who the **** knows?

Will Emerson

Hey, Eric? Don't beat yourself too much about this stuff, all right? Some people like taking the long way home. Who the **** knows?

Eric Dale

I run Risk Management. I don't really see how that's a natural place to start cutting jobs.

Sam Rogers

I'll do it, John, but not because of your little speech. But because I need the money. Hard to believe after all these years, but I... I need the money.

Will Emerson

Jesus, Seth. Listen, if you really wanna do this with your life you have to believe you're necessary and you are. People wanna live like this with their cars and big ****in' houses they can't even pay for, then you're necessary. The only reason that they all get to continue living like kings is because we got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off and then the whole world gets really ****in' feral really ****in' quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but they don't. They want what we have to give them but they also wanna, you know, play innocent and pretend they have no idea where it came from. Well, that's more hypocrisy than I'm willing to swallow, so **** 'em. **** normal people. You know, the funny thing is, tomorrow if all of this goes tits up they're gonna crucify us for being too reckless but if we're wrong, and everything gets back on track? Well then, the same people are gonna laugh till they piss their pants cause we're gonna all look like the biggest pussies God ever let through the door.[Seth: You think we're wrong?] No. They're all ****.