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Loading... The Big Short (original 2010; edition 2011)by Michael Lewis
Work detailsThe Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (2010)
p. 80  lindap69 | Apr 5, 2013 |  very readable explanation of 'Wall Street' end of the financial breakdown, focused on outsiders to the financial industry who saw the debacle coming FKarr | Apr 3, 2013 | This book is presented to us in a reader friendly manner that makes this complicated story of true events easy to follow and the dots easy to connect. The recession of 2008 impacted nearly everyone in the United States and made its presence known all over the globe from the trickle down after effects that were spread out to other nations as well. There were many factors that contributed to the events of 2008 but there were key mistakes that were made and key shifts in the world of investing that played a major role and contributed greatly to these events. Even if you are not familiar with investing or not of a financial background, this book will be easy for you to follow and a worthwhile read. I'd recommend this book to just about anyone and I feel it is an important read and book to have in your library. (  ) Avolyn | Feb 7, 2013 | Lewis has the inside story from a couple investors who realized what was happening with subprime mortgages and credit default swaps and derivatives, and very successfully went short on mortgage bonds and brokers and banks that were dealing in them. The revelations about the criminal and immoral behavior of the mortgage lenders, bankers, brokers, rating agencies and regulators are deadening and disheartening. Powerful interests flouted the law and did what they wanted to do to make lots of money, putting an entire nation and the world at risk. The scope of the crime made it impossible to escape the financial meltdown, and most of those responsible kept their money and stayed out of jail. Lewis made it possible for me to get a satisfying understanding of the financial instruments and the convoluted criminal process of creating them and hiding them. Very readable, arcane financial stuff in only a few places. ( ) rsubber | Dec 31, 2012 | Great book focusing on the people involved in the financial meltdown. But . . . it needs a cheatsheet or appendix explaining the terms and/or concepts (credit default swap, etc.), and an index. (  ) tuke | Dec 1, 2012 |
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. Lewis is a gifted chronicler and debunker and demystifier of the world of finance. 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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