The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

by Michael Lewis

Overview

Why Michael Lewis, according to Malcolm Gladwell, “is the finest storyteller of our generation”:

Liar’s Poker

“So memorable and alive. . . . It’s one of those rare works that encapsulate and define an era. . . . Remember the 1980s? When you want to recall this roaring decade, pick up a copy of Liar’s Poker.” —Fortune

“Devastatingly funny.” —New York

Moneyball

“The best business book Lewis has written. It may be the best business book anyone has written.” —Mark Gerson, The Weekly Standard

“A brilliantly told tale. . . . Michael Lewis’s beautiful obsession with the idea of value has once again yielded gold.” —Garry Trudeau

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393072235
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/15/2010
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, The Money Culture, The New New Thing, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Panic, Home Game, The Big Short, and Boomerang, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children.

Date of Birth:

October 15, 1960

Place of Birth:

New Orleans, LA

Education:

Princeton University, B.A. in Art History, 1982; London School of Economics, 1985

Table of Contents

Prologue Poltergeist xiii

Chapter 1 A Secret Origin Story 1

Chapter 2 In the Land of the Blind 26

Chapter 3 "How Can a Guy Who Can't Speak English Lie?" 61

Chapter 4 How to Harvest a Migrant Worker 85

Chapter 5 Accidental Capitalists 104

Chapter 6 Spider-Man at The Venetian 136

Chapter 7 The Great Treasure Hunt 160

Chapter 8 The Long Quiet 179

Chapter 9 A Death of Interest 200

Chapter 10 Two Men in a Boat 226

Epilogue Everything Is Correlated 253

Afterword 265

Acknowledgments 269

Index 271

What People are Saying About This

Dick Durbin

I’ve joined a lot of other people in just finishing Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short, and it’s really an eye-opener of what was going on at the time that this real estate bubble was created.

Carl Levin

I read it, marked it up for my staff, underlined it, made copies and asked them to read it.

Harry Reid

I recommend everyone within the sound of my voice to read [this] book.

Jackie Speier

[A]n incredible piece of commentary on Wall Street.

Byron Dorgan

If you’re wondering if there’s importance or an urgency to this issue, read the book The Big Short by Michael Lewis, and then, when you’re finished reading, come back to the floor and say that you support this amendment [on financial reform].

Editorial Reviews

If you’re wondering if there’s importance or an urgency to this issue, read the book The Big Short by Michael Lewis, and then, when you’re finished reading, come back to the floor and say that you support this amendment [on financial reform].”

Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota)

[A]n incredible piece of commentary on Wall Street.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.)

I read it, marked it up for my staff, underlined it, made copies and asked them to read it.

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.)

I’ve joined a lot of other people in just finishing Michael Lewis’s book, The Big Short, and it’s really an eye-opener of what was going on at the time that this real estate bubble was created.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)

I recommend everyone within the sound of my voice to read [this] book.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

It is the work of our greatest financial journalist, at the top of his game. And it's essential reading.

Graydon Carter - Vanity Fair

[A] strikingly original take that offers an enhanced understanding of the debacle....Since his first book, Liar's Poker, Lewis has tackled big, engaging stories...by finding and developing characters whose personal narratives reveal a larger truth. He's done it again.”

Daniel Gross - The New York Times Book Review

[A] strikingly original take that offers an enhanced understanding of the debacle....Since his first book, Liar's Poker, Lewis has tackled big, engaging stories...by finding and developing characters whose personal narratives reveal a larger truth. He's done it again.— Daniel Gross

The New York Times Book Review

Superb: Michael Lewis doing what he does best, illuminating the idiocy, madness and greed of modern finance. . . . Lewis achieves what I previously imagined impossible: He makes subprime sexy all over again.— Andrew Leonard

Salon.com

It is the work of our greatest financial journalist, at the top of his game. And it's essential reading.— Graydon Carter

Vanity Fair

No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis....[he] does a nimble job of using his subjects’ stories to explicate the greed, idiocies and hypocrisies of a system notably lacking in grown-up supervision....Writing in faintly Tom Wolfe-ian prose, Mr. Lewis does a colorful job of introducing the lay reader to the Darwinian world of the bond market.— Michiko Kakutani

The New York Times

Versatile best-selling author Lewis (Panic) gives a different take on the 2007-08 credit crisis as he chronicles how a handful of investment managers detected early on the growing bubble in the mortgage bond market and made fortunes betting against it. Lewis is a storyteller, and he weaves the personal stories of these renegades against the inner workings of Wall Street's mortgage-backed securities money machine. He explains in plain language how the industry obscured credit risk by packaging and repackaging low-quality subprime mortgages into complicated securities that could receive high credit ratings in a process he calls the financial alchemy equivalent of turning lead into gold. He says investors then looked at little more than the ratings as they bought billions of dollars' worth of these supposedly safe bonds. Lewis turns the crisis into a true financial thriller that screams of Wall Street's greed, recklessness, deceit, incompetence, and hubris. VERDICT Readers from generalists through specialists will find this fast-paced, engaging account both illuminating and disturbing. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/09.]—Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA

Library Journal

Although Lewis is perhaps best known for his sports-related nonfiction (including The Blind Side), his first book was the autobiographical Liar's Poker, in which he chronicled his disillusionment as a young gun on Wall Street in the “greed is good” 1980s. He returns to his financial roots to excavate the crisis of 2007-2008, employing his trademark technique of casting a microcosmic lens on the personal histories of several Wall Street outsiders who were betting against the grain—to shed light on the macrocosmic tale of greed and fear. Although Lewis reads the book's introduction, narration duties are assumed by Jesse Boggs, a veteran narrator of business titles (including Lewis's own 2008 book Panic!). Boggs's rich baritone is well suited to the task and trips lightly through a maze of financial jargon (CDOs, derivatives, mid-prime lending) and a dizzying cast of characters. Lewis returns on the final disc for a 10-minute interview about the crisis's aftermath, including a savvy assessment of the wisdom of the financial bailout and where-are-they-now updates on the book's various heroes and villains. A Norton hardcover. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

I read Lewis for the same reasons I watch Tiger Woods. I’ll never play like that. But it’s good to be reminded every now and again what genius looks like.

Malcolm Gladwell - New York Times Book Review

Superb: Michael Lewis doing what he does best, illuminating the idiocy, madness and greed of modern finance. . . . Lewis achieves what I previously imagined impossible: He makes subprime sexy all over again.

Andrew Leonard - Salon.com

No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis....[he] does a nimble job of using his subjects’ stories to explicate the greed, idiocies and hypocrisies of a system notably lacking in grown-up supervision....Writing in faintly Tom Wolfe-ian prose, Mr. Lewis does a colorful job of introducing the lay reader to the Darwinian world of the bond market.

Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times

No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis. . . . [he] does a nimble job of using his subjects’ stories to explicate the greed, idiocies and hypocrisies of a system notably lacking in grown-up supervision.

Michiko Kakutani - New York Times