Comments | inverarity: Book Review: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis

inverarity

Book Review: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis

Nov 15, 2010 10:28

One-line summary: Do not attribute malice to Wall Street when stupidity will suffice.

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michael lewis, non-fiction, books, reviews

Comments 3

Sounds interesting, but... anonymous November 16 2010, 07:36:03 UTC

OK, here's my problem: The topic of this book sounds really interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I have happily read about it in economics and liberal blogs for the last year or so. I pretty much already know how the banks (and the home sellers, and the rating agencies, and the "regulators," and the politicians, and the...) fucked up the housing industry until they destroyed the whole economy. So, does the book have anything to offer someone who already knows more about subprime mortgages and credit default swaps than possibly any sane human being should?

-TealTerror

Re: Sounds interesting, but... inverarity November 16 2010, 07:57:42 UTC

Probably not, unless you want to know more about the nitty-gritty of Wall Street machinations (do you know what a Mezzanine CDO is?) and some of the personalities involved.

Re: Sounds interesting, but... anonymous November 17 2010, 11:07:13 UTC

I do not know what a Mezzanine CDO is, but I imagine it's likely another one of those derivatives that was completely unregulated and opaque. And while I'm somewhat interested in the personalities, I think your review (along with some other stuff I've read) pretty much summarized all I want to know about them.

It seems that whenever we valorize people as semi-gods ("The Masters of the Universe"), bad things happen. Authoritarianism isn't limited to politicians, after all.

-TealTerror