Search advanced search
 
Books
Search:
x dismiss this message

Did you know you can edit this page?

The Big Short
  • Rated 0 stars
Read The Big Short

The Big Short (2010) (edit title/settings)

Inside the Doomsday Machine

by Michael Lewis (Author) (edit contributors)

Share this book on:
see page history

Description edit see section history

The #1 New York Times bestseller: a brilliant account—character-rich and darkly humorous—of how the U.S. economy was driven over the cliff. When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had... read more

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

  • - Shareholder demand for profit forced investment executives to eat the forbidden fruit of toxic derivatives
  • - Aggregate risk at the bottom and then diversify it, thus triple b becomes triple a risk and you dont own it.
  • - Financial superheroes save the world by making billions taking advantadge of the failures of the subprime market.

Summary edit see section history

The free fall of the American economy—finally occurred; how the things that we wanted, like ridiculously easy money and greatly expanded home ownership, were vehicles for that crash; and how shareholder demand for profit forced investment executives to eat the forbidden fruit of toxic... read more

The free fall of the American economy—finally occurred; how the things that we wanted, like ridiculously easy money and greatly expanded home ownership, were vehicles for that crash; and how shareholder demand for profit forced investment executives to eat the forbidden fruit of toxic derivatives. Michael Lewis’s splendid cast of characters includes villains, a few heroes, and a lot of people who look very, very foolish: high government officials, including the watchdogs; heads of major investment banks (some overlap here with previous category); perhaps even the face in your mirror. In this trenchant, raucous, irresistible narrative, Lewis writes of the goats and of the few who saw what the emperor was wearing, and gives them, most memorably, what they deserve. He proves yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times. .

People edit see section history

Show all 61 characters
Popular Covers

Loading covers…

Choose your book’s cover

Quotes edit see section history

  • “The only way to get paid as an analyst at Oppenheimer was being right and making enough noise about it that people noticed it.”
    Alice Schroeder
  • “All these subprime lending companies were growing so rapidly, and using such goofy accounting, that they could mask the fact that they had no real earnings, just illusory, accounting-driven, ones. They had the essential feature of a Ponzi scheme: To maintain the fiction that they were profitable enterprises, they needed more and more capital to create more and more subprime loans.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • The CDO was, in effect, a credit laundering service for the residents of Lower Middle Class America. For Wall Street it was a machine that turned lead into gold.
    Highlighted by 1187 Kindle customers
  • The accounting rules allowed them to assume the loans would be repaid, and not prematurely. This assumption became the engine of their doom.
    Highlighted by 1179 Kindle customers
  • How do you make poor people feel wealthy when wages are stagnant? You give them cheap loans.
    Highlighted by 1160 Kindle customers
  • “Any business where you can sell a product and make money without having to worry how the product performs is going to attract sleazy people.
    Highlighted by 1019 Kindle customers
  • The triple-A ratings gave everyone an excuse to ignore the risks they were running.
    Highlighted by 840 Kindle customers
  • In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000.
    Highlighted by 810 Kindle customers
  • “I hated discussing ideas with investors,” he said, “because I then become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process.” Once you became an idea’s defender you had a harder time changing your mind about it.
    Highlighted by 761 Kindle customers
  • “When you’re a conservative Republican, you never think people are making money by ripping other people off,” he said. His mind was now fully open to the possibility. “I now realized there was an entire industry, called consumer finance, that basically existed to rip people off.”
    Highlighted by 736 Kindle customers
  • The opacity and complexity of the bond market was, for big Wall Street firms, a huge advantage. The bond market customer lived in perpetual fear of what he didn’t know. If Wall Street bond departments were increasingly the source of Wall Street profits, it was in part because of this: In the bond market it was still possible to make huge sums of money from the fear, and the ignorance, of customers.
    Highlighted by 684 Kindle customers
  • Writing a check separates a commitment from a conversation. —Warren Buffett
    Highlighted by 665 Kindle customers
Show all 12 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

Organizations edit see section history

  • Morgan Stanley: A financial services firm.
  • Goldman Sachs: An investment banking and securities firm.
  • Bear Stearns: An investment banking and securities firm.
  • Deutsche Bank: an international universal bank with its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany.
  • AIG Financial Product: AIGFP focused principally on OTC derivatives markets and acted as principal in nearly all of its transactions involving capital markets offerings and corporate finance, investment and financial risk management products. AIGFP played key roles in the acquisition of London City Airport and, in one of the largest private equity transactions announced in 2006, the management-led buyout of Kinder Morgan Inc.

First Sentence edit see section history

Eisman entered finance about the time I exited it.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Prologue: Poltergeist
Chapter 1 - A Secret Origin Story
Chapter 2 - In the Land of the Blind
Chapter 3 - "How Can a Guy Who Can't Speak English Lie?"
Chapter 4 - How to Harvest a Migrant Worker
Chapter 5 - Accidental Capitalists
Chapter 6 - Spider-Man at The Venetian
Chapter 7 - The Great Treasure Hunt
Chapter 8 - The Long Quiet
Chapter 9 - A Death of Interest
Chapter 10 - Two Men in a Boat
Epilogue: Everything Is Correlated
Acknowledgments

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Runet Labs. (community list)
This book is in New York Times Bestsellers (Current). (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Michael Lewis (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 9780393072235
Page Count: 266

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: HC106.83 .L5 2010
  • Dewey: 330.973

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Not a book for children. Unless you want to teach them the consequences of being greedy adults blind to the impact their actions have on others.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Liar's Poker
  • Moneyball
  • When Genius Failed
  • Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle
  • Next
  • Too Big to Fail
  • House of Cards
  • When Genius Failed
  • Lords of Finance
  • Origins of the Crash
  • Rainbow's End
  • Griftopia
  • Boomerang

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history

   
  • Liar's Poker

We’re hiding the themes, errata, movie connections, books that influenced this book, books influenced by this book and books that cite this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.

This book has no spoilers.

© 2006-2013 Shelfari | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy

Close