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The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine…
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The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (original 2010; edition 2010)

by Michael Lewis

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5,1021712,113 (4.2)141
The author examines the causes of the U.S. stock market crash of 2008 and its relation to overpriced real estate, bad mortgages, shareholder demand for excessive profits, and the growth of toxic derivatives.
Member:kellyn
Title:The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Authors:Michael Lewis
Info:W. W. Norton & Company (2010), Edition: 1St Edition, Hardcover, 266 pages
Collections:To read non-fiction
Rating:
Tags:Economics and finances

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The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (2010)

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» See also 141 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 170 (next | show all)
If you want to really understand what was so badly wrong about the US financial system during the naughties and why its stupidies brought about the Global Financial Crisis you couldn’t do better than read this book, which is as gripping as a novel. Lewis, who was once a stock market trader himself, is well placed to describe and explain the madness of the trading in financial derivatives based on hundreds of thousands of mortgages granted to poor people who couldn’t afford them. ( )
  davidrgrigg | Mar 23, 2024 |
A frightening book. Pissed me off all the way through. A lot of people should have gone to jail over the sub prime lending fiasco.

I read this trying to get a better grasp of what happened to our economy. I am not a big finance guy and hoped it would be written in a way I could understand. It was great.

People saw the collapse coming but were ignored in favor of greed. A must read. ( )
  cdaley | Nov 2, 2023 |
For those who have seen the movie based on this book, I still think it is in your best interests to read the book. It's fascinating, to put it mildly. This isn't exactly a story where I can ruin the ending: the big investment banks created derivative products called CDOs based on subprime (meaning unlikely to be paid back) mortgages. The CDOs were insured (mostly by AIG) by Credit Default Swaps, and AIG and others happily allowed people without any investment in CDOs to buy Credit Default Swaps on their own (basically allowing the creation of a derivative of a derivative, the synthetic CDO). The financial rating institutions, like Moody's and Standard and Poor's, rated these CDOs as AAA, which meant that insurance companies and retirement funds could invest in them. (As a note: AAA means as safe as a government bond, and therefore, riskless). This was a catastrophe waiting to happen and it appears that the banks really had no idea what they were doing, despite being warned by at least a few people. While this all sounds very technical, Lewis manages to make it entirely understandable.

This is essentially a story about what happens when we let our financial institutions run amok through deregulation. Deregulation began with Reagan, and then continued onwards through the Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama administrations (I can only imagine it will continue through the Trump administration as well). This book is a perfect story of a perfect storm, and if it is missing anything, it is a call to action. But I think the call to action is implied by the very nature of the events Lewis describes. ( )
  dogboi | Sep 16, 2023 |
Very interesting book about some of the people who saw the opportunity to make money by buying credit default swaps (insurance) against sub-prime mortgage bonds. The scariest part of this book for me was how ineffective an stupid the ratings agencies were/are and how the big Wall Street firms didn't even understand what they were building and selling. Putting your money under your mattress may not be a bad idea after all. ( )
  lieblbiz | Aug 30, 2023 |
As someone who had just entered University when the financial crisis went down, I only had the basic understandings of what happened and that a lot of shadiness went on behind the curtains. The Big Short was an excellent insight into the small group of people who were actually able to foresee the crisis happening. Michael Lewis does a great job of explaining a lot of complicated financial jargon in a way that is more palatable for the nonmembers (so most of us) of the financial sector.

In short, great book that is very insightful and even contains a few laughs throughout. ( )
  Acilladon | Jul 30, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 170 (next | show all)
Thinking about the subprime crisis with the benefit of da Vinci’s distance, it struck me anew how Darwinian and predatory the whole system is. One constantly has to ask, Cui Bono: “Who benefits?” And Ubi Est Mea: “Where’s mine?” One of Eisman’s traders was constantly obsessed with how the party on the other side might screw him (though “screw” was not the word used). That is probably a good attitude to have on Wall Street.
 
By focusing so precisely on the particular, Lewis makes the objects of his scrutiny stand for the whole of the financial world: its obscurantism, under-regulation and wildly short-termist institutional profiteering; the bank bosses’ reluctance to scrutinise the mechanics and risks of their most profitable divisions; and the general refusal to understand the connection between the profits made and the dangerous actuality they were based on: in this case, the deliberately over-complicated financial “instruments” and the poor Americans who were about to default on their mortgages.
 
In his new book, Lewis is neither obnoxious nor charming. The skies have fallen. The market Wall Street created in the housing debt of the very poorest Americans, so-called "sub-prime" mortgage bonds and various derivative securities, which fell to bits in 2007 and all but engulfed the world in 2008, is the greatest financial fraud since the 18th century. Men and women who once made us laugh now make us shudder. In other words, The Big Short is not half the fun of Liar's Poker, but it is more important.
added by mikeg2 | editThe guardian, James Buchan (Mar 27, 2010)
 
Lewis is a gifted chronicler and debunker and demystifier of the world of finance.
added by r.orrison | editBoing Boing, Cory Doctorow (Mar 18, 2010)
 
No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis, the author of “Liar’s Poker,” that now classic portrait of 1980s Wall Street. His entertaining new book does not attempt a macro view of the financial crisis, but instead proposes to open a small window on the calamities by recounting the stories of some savvy renegades who cashed in on their conviction that the system was rotten.
 

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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Michael Lewisprimary authorall editionscalculated
Boggs, JesseReadersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea about them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.  -  Leo Tolstoy
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For Michael Kinsley, To Whom I Still Owe an Article
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How can a guy who can't speak English lie? - Greg Lippmann
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The author examines the causes of the U.S. stock market crash of 2008 and its relation to overpriced real estate, bad mortgages, shareholder demand for excessive profits, and the growth of toxic derivatives.

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Book description
Tres años antes de la crisis mundial del 2008 originada por las hipotecas subprime que hundió prácticamente el sistema financiero global, cuatro tipos fuera del sistema fueron los únicos que vislumbraron que todo el mercado hipotecario iba a quebrar. Decidieron entonces hacer algo insólito: apostar contra el mercado de la vivienda a la baja, en contra de cualquier criterio lógico en aquella época... Adaptación del libro “La gran apuesta” de Michael Lewis, que reflexiona sobre la quiebra del sector inmobiliario norteamericano que originó la crisis económica mundial en 2008.
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W.W. Norton

2 editions of this book were published by W.W. Norton.

Editions: 0393072231, 0393338827

Penguin Australia

An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.

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Recorded Books

An edition of this book was published by Recorded Books.

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