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jon_auc's review against another edition
4.0
A well-written explanation of how the 2008 financial collapse occurred, told through the stories of a handful of investors who saw the disaster coming. Much like Lewis accomplished with the advanced sabermetrics (baseball analysis formulas) included in his book "Moneyball," here he clearly explains what mortgaged-backed sub-prime loans and CDOs and how they let to ultimate doom. Perfect for a financial layperson as myself to understand.
odie192's review against another edition
4.0
Michael Lewis has done an excellent job in talking about how the banking system has failed, very good read.
jonlewis's review against another edition
5.0
If this book doesn't make you homicidal then nothing will. Lewis covers how disparate groups of (and some individual) investors were able to see the 2007 financial meltdown. He does an excellent job explaining the dry, technical jargon that is necessary to understand all of the mess and breaks everything down to expose the root cause of the crisis. The truly infruiating part about the whole damn thing is how everyone, the people that saw it coming and the morons responsible for it, came out of the situation disgustingly rich.
george_odera's review against another edition
4.0
"I'm not making a bet against a bond", said Mike Burry, one of the prominent characters in the book, "I'm making a bet against a system".
The Big Short is a lucid explanation of the vicious cycle of mortgages originated by lenders, bought by Wall Street, given a cachet by the rating agencies, and conveyed to investors. Each party in this cycle has varying degrees of complicity, but the commonality among them is that they were all willfully blind to the consequences of their actions; the Mexican strawberry picker, and the Jamaican stripper should have nown better than to fall for the "teaser rates" in their mortgages; Joe Cassano's AIG FP insured debt with a high likelihood of delinquency not out of brazen stupidity, but owing to AIG's eagerness to feed its golden goose; Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and co. underwrote triple B-rated mortgages because the acknowledgement of the danger this boded would be uncomfortable; Moody's, Standard & Poor, and Fitch overrated mortgage bonds not because they had no ability to vet a mortgage with with a poor rating score, but because Wall Street paid them for quantity, not quality; and ultimately, Wall Street's credo, "Greed is Good", fosters a competitive cult of culture yet bred the Frankenstein monster.
The conspiracy of these and many other circumstances yielded a situation in which banks used depositors' money in the Russian roulette of the subprime mortgage industry. On the other side of this bet were the "Big Shorters" such as Greg Lippman, Mike Burry,Charlie Ledlie, Jamie Mai, and others. When the music stopped, so did the dance, and thus came the 2008 financial crisis. The Big Short is a story of human folly, willful blindness, myopia, and general fallibility.
I'd give the book a five-star rating, except for the fact that the it only gave the background to the crisis in its postscript. The author shied away from explaining the political influences in deregulation of the financial markets between the 80s and 90s that culminated in the crisis. As such, the book was too politically correct to make appreciable mention of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner, Brooksley Born, Hank Paulson, and other key political figures in the events that preceded and succeded the crisis. Nonetheless, a worthy read to understanding the crisis, and by extension, human nature.
The Big Short is a lucid explanation of the vicious cycle of mortgages originated by lenders, bought by Wall Street, given a cachet by the rating agencies, and conveyed to investors. Each party in this cycle has varying degrees of complicity, but the commonality among them is that they were all willfully blind to the consequences of their actions; the Mexican strawberry picker, and the Jamaican stripper should have nown better than to fall for the "teaser rates" in their mortgages; Joe Cassano's AIG FP insured debt with a high likelihood of delinquency not out of brazen stupidity, but owing to AIG's eagerness to feed its golden goose; Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and co. underwrote triple B-rated mortgages because the acknowledgement of the danger this boded would be uncomfortable; Moody's, Standard & Poor, and Fitch overrated mortgage bonds not because they had no ability to vet a mortgage with with a poor rating score, but because Wall Street paid them for quantity, not quality; and ultimately, Wall Street's credo, "Greed is Good", fosters a competitive cult of culture yet bred the Frankenstein monster.
The conspiracy of these and many other circumstances yielded a situation in which banks used depositors' money in the Russian roulette of the subprime mortgage industry. On the other side of this bet were the "Big Shorters" such as Greg Lippman, Mike Burry,Charlie Ledlie, Jamie Mai, and others. When the music stopped, so did the dance, and thus came the 2008 financial crisis. The Big Short is a story of human folly, willful blindness, myopia, and general fallibility.
I'd give the book a five-star rating, except for the fact that the it only gave the background to the crisis in its postscript. The author shied away from explaining the political influences in deregulation of the financial markets between the 80s and 90s that culminated in the crisis. As such, the book was too politically correct to make appreciable mention of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Timothy Geithner, Brooksley Born, Hank Paulson, and other key political figures in the events that preceded and succeded the crisis. Nonetheless, a worthy read to understanding the crisis, and by extension, human nature.