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Bird and Fortune - Subprime Crisis

kerviel88888
Comedy
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this comedy video2 months2008–2018 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN points to it as a funny but accurate send-up of banker thinking, noting that comedians grasped the crisis before Lehman collapsed.

John Bird and John Fortune satirize the investment banking mindset in a mock interview about the subprime mortgage crisis. The sketch lampoons structured credit products and the banks' reassurances shortly before the crash.

“at least comedians seemed to understand the crisis several months before Lehman crashed” (HN, 2018)

2 recommendations · 1 citations · 1 jokes · Comedy

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@ra Oct 2008 Recommends
on HN thread The Commanding Heights - 6hr documentary on the global economy (2003)
Read more
Oohh... This is one of my favourite documentary series of all time. Compulsive viewing. I'm not sure how it exposes anything about the current situation, but it sure underlines what the free-market economy means, how it came about and why it's so important for our lives. One of the underlying messages in the series is that Free markets and Free democracy are intrinsically linked. I'd be really interested to see a 2008 update on this. One that takes into account the new China and Putin's Russia. While China is touched upon in the series - I feel that the author would have many more insights on the impact of China on the rest of the world, today. And Putin's Russia - well here's another piece of fascinating history in the making. One of my favourite sub-plots in the series is the Thatcher story, and the economic reasoning behind the removal of government subsidy for industry. While I was too young to understand it at the time, surely this was one of the greatest feats of leadership in a long time. For something lighthearted and more related to today, see either of the following: The subprime primer: [link] And from the BBC comedy department, 'Bird and Fortune' [this video]
Lighthearted BBC comedy take on the subprime crisis.
@pdfernhout Sep 2018 Recommends
on HN thread Post-crash economics: have we learnt nothing?
Well, at least comedians seemed to understand the crisis several months before Lehman crashed: "Subprime Banking Mess" [this video] "John Bird and John Fortune (the Long Johns) brilliantly, and accurately, describing the mindset of the investment banking community in this satirical interview."
Satirical interview that accurately captured banker mindset before Lehman.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@jhrobert Oct 2010 Makes a joke
on HN thread After 4 years of self-funded coding marathons I feel "finished", care to talk?
Read more
"Good names" humour Truth is your product probably didn't have a great "good name". See starting at 5:18 in [this video] -- that's about the subprime market. hilarious. So, as the video demonstrates: no fucking great idea can challenge a really great "good name" To make my point, let's put an example (me). Take a commodity idea. Say "a wiki". And then name it "SimplyWiki", or, adding some trickery, "SimpliWiki". Now your get a great "good name" and it is the only thing that really matters. /humour Well... some persistence is good too, as mentioned before, so... keep trying and remember to have fun, it's easier to persist in doing fun things.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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