The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

In the early 2000s, Wall Street found a way to pocket a few extra billion dollars. It involved buying and selling homes, subprime mortgage loans (dressed up to appear more valuable than they really were) and, of course, the notion that the American public wouldn’t know what was going on behind its collective back. The result was a housing industry-wide Dumpster fire, and something that came to be known as “the housing crisis,” which led this country to the verge of economic collapse. What Michael Lewis does in The Big Short is reveal who was involved, who ignored some obvious warning signs and who the ultimate winners and losers were. He’s meticulous in his writing, but never exhausting. And as someone who used to work on Wall Street, Lewis knows the details, yet is adept at simplifying the technical jargon. The arrogance, greed and shortsightedness of Wall Street will blow your mind. A must-read for anyone who was affected by the housing crisis, which aside from the schemers who made money off it, would be all of us.