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vegantrav's review against another edition
5.0
You might think that a book about subprime mortgages, bonds, credit default swaps, and collateral debt obligations just has to be boring. You would be wrong. Very wrong.
Michael Lewis carefully delineates how and why the financial crisis of 2008 occurred. He does it by telling the stories of a handful of individuals who all saw the problems with subprime mortgages when the rest of Wall Street was blind to this matter--largely blinded by the obscene amounts of money that they were making by selling bonds on bundles of these mortgages.
Because its subject matter is very complex, this book is very challenging; you really have to focus and attend to Lewis's presentation very closely in order to grasp how the credit default swaps and collateral debt obligations worked and were manipulated, but once you see the light, you'll have an "aha" moment where you will, like the main cast of characters, be asking yourself, "How was this legal?"
The 2008 crisis was caused not just by lending companies and banks making subprime mortgage loans to people who were almost certain to default but also by Wall Street firms and hedge fund managers who initially made rivers of money by buying and then selling bonds that were issued for the subprime loans. If the bonds had been properly rated, no one would have bought them because the subprime mortgages that they were issued for were made to horrible credit risks, but the bond ratings agencies, Moody's and Standard and Poor's, were paid by the Wall Street firms to rate the bonds, and if they gave bad ratings, then they were less likely to be hired to rate more bonds, so the ratings agencies had a financial incentive not to rate the bonds poorly. It's really amazing that what happened was perfectly legal.
Money quote from the book:
"The upper classes of this country raped this country. You fucked people. You built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience. Nobody ever said, 'The is wrong.'" --Steve Eisman, one of the few investors who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming and who made tens of millions of dollars by taking a short position on CDOs (collateral debt obligations), which were basically bonds made up bundles of subprime loans
Michael Lewis carefully delineates how and why the financial crisis of 2008 occurred. He does it by telling the stories of a handful of individuals who all saw the problems with subprime mortgages when the rest of Wall Street was blind to this matter--largely blinded by the obscene amounts of money that they were making by selling bonds on bundles of these mortgages.
Because its subject matter is very complex, this book is very challenging; you really have to focus and attend to Lewis's presentation very closely in order to grasp how the credit default swaps and collateral debt obligations worked and were manipulated, but once you see the light, you'll have an "aha" moment where you will, like the main cast of characters, be asking yourself, "How was this legal?"
The 2008 crisis was caused not just by lending companies and banks making subprime mortgage loans to people who were almost certain to default but also by Wall Street firms and hedge fund managers who initially made rivers of money by buying and then selling bonds that were issued for the subprime loans. If the bonds had been properly rated, no one would have bought them because the subprime mortgages that they were issued for were made to horrible credit risks, but the bond ratings agencies, Moody's and Standard and Poor's, were paid by the Wall Street firms to rate the bonds, and if they gave bad ratings, then they were less likely to be hired to rate more bonds, so the ratings agencies had a financial incentive not to rate the bonds poorly. It's really amazing that what happened was perfectly legal.
Money quote from the book:
"The upper classes of this country raped this country. You fucked people. You built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience. Nobody ever said, 'The is wrong.'" --Steve Eisman, one of the few investors who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming and who made tens of millions of dollars by taking a short position on CDOs (collateral debt obligations), which were basically bonds made up bundles of subprime loans
tritlo's review against another edition
3.0
A good book that gives one a lot of insights into the 2008 collapse. A documentary told in a very narrative way, it really helps you gain some understanding of what happened.
aqsa_ayman's review against another edition
3.0
I feel I can take away ideas like CDOs and credit default swaps from this book for further research, but that’s also because I couldn’t understand everything I wanted to while reading this. I liked the tower analogy for the CDOs for example, but generally there was more emphasis on stating how corrupt or deceptive the decisions that these financiers made were. That makes complete sense; the book is describing the causes of the crisis and isn’t a tutorial to supplement my (weak) financial knowledge. But I kept asking myself why such decisions were allowed, and wishing for more insight from the people that the main characters were betting against.
I liked how the author talks about these characters in a way that brings out their very distinct personalities, even though morally I don’t know how to feel about them. They bet against the “baddies” of the financial system, but they also admit to fuelling the machine that caused the collapse.
I had to rewind pretty much every time I came back to this book to make sure I still had some sense of what was currently happening, and there were parts that got a bit dull, but overall I’m grateful to have gained some insight into the 2008 crisis, and as a result allow myself to be more cynical, especially when I’m at a point in life to be considering big financial commitments.
I liked how the author talks about these characters in a way that brings out their very distinct personalities, even though morally I don’t know how to feel about them. They bet against the “baddies” of the financial system, but they also admit to fuelling the machine that caused the collapse.
I had to rewind pretty much every time I came back to this book to make sure I still had some sense of what was currently happening, and there were parts that got a bit dull, but overall I’m grateful to have gained some insight into the 2008 crisis, and as a result allow myself to be more cynical, especially when I’m at a point in life to be considering big financial commitments.
ableinchrist14's review against another edition
2.0
This book was very dry and boring. It has a lot of information as to what happened and why during the 2008 housing bust, but it just drug on and on. I'm willing to bet the movie is much better than this book is.
lastpaige111's review against another edition
3.0
I understood about a third of this book, and both comforted and discomforted knowing that even the people who sold these arcane financial instruments -- and those who bought them -- didn't understand them either. What I did take away from the book is that I am very glad I fled Wall Street in 1981 before I was seduced and became a vampiress who produced nothing but misery.
Hey -- I did figure out what selling short means. That's something, right?
Plus I watched BLINDSIDE while skimming the book -- how gripping Lewis' one narrative is compared to the other. But maybe that's just me. I just can't get excited reading about how Wall Street's CEO's have bankrupted us. Even if the book is about the oddballs who figured it all out in advance ...
I remembered the guys I worked with in 1980-81, and I hated them even more. But they don't care. They're very rich. And we taxpayers took care of that for them.
But I read this entire book and I didn't care about anyone in it, one way or the other. I think that means that Lewis is not the greatest nonfiction story teller of a generation, as he has been touted to be.
And Obama is wrong wanting to end the Bush tax cuts? Puh-lease. They should send all of us personal checks, too.
Hey -- I did figure out what selling short means. That's something, right?
Plus I watched BLINDSIDE while skimming the book -- how gripping Lewis' one narrative is compared to the other. But maybe that's just me. I just can't get excited reading about how Wall Street's CEO's have bankrupted us. Even if the book is about the oddballs who figured it all out in advance ...
I remembered the guys I worked with in 1980-81, and I hated them even more. But they don't care. They're very rich. And we taxpayers took care of that for them.
But I read this entire book and I didn't care about anyone in it, one way or the other. I think that means that Lewis is not the greatest nonfiction story teller of a generation, as he has been touted to be.
And Obama is wrong wanting to end the Bush tax cuts? Puh-lease. They should send all of us personal checks, too.
johnlambrechts's review against another edition
5.0
Allows a sneak peak into the institutional investors debt markets.
Something I always wondered about.
Something I always wondered about.
marcymurli's review against another edition
2.0
Although the book is well written, it's rather difficult to plod through. For one thing, none of the people Lewis profiles are remotely likable as characters; in fact they are literally the scum of the earth. But more importantly the complex factors that led to the subprime crash on Wall Street are not explained well enough. Finally, there are way too many f-bombs in this book, which makes it a difficult book to recommend to my students who are interested in economics.