The Big Short

Inside the Doomsday Machine

By: Michael Lewis

Narrated by: Jesse Boggs

Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Featuring an exclusive audio interview with Michael Lewis

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 taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine, and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real-estate derivative markets, where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren’t talking.

The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real-estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages?

Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his number-one best-selling Liar’s Poker. "Who got it right?" he asks. Who saw the ever-rising real-estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception? And what qualities of character made those few persist when their peers and colleagues dismissed them as Chicken Littles?

Out of this handful of unlikely—really unlikely—heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier best sellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our times.

©2010 Michael Lewis (P)2010 Simon & Schuster

Critic reviews

“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)

“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)

"[Michael Lewis] is the finest storyteller of our generation.” (Malcolm Gladwell)

Great analysis of the 2008 crash

After reading this book, I finally understood what caused the market crash in 2008. It was so inevitable and the few who saw the coming disaster profited greatly. Michael Lewis made a very, very complex problem understandable. I finally understand what a credit default swap is. Warning! This book is not for the financially faint of heart. Well worth the effort.

Great Read

Michael Lewis has the gift of being able to explain the most complicated financial concepts in easy to understand language. He has done this in spades in describing the conplicated sub-prime morgage market and the complex financial instuments conceved of by the so called wizards of wall street. A must for any investor or anyone interested in investing. It reads like a mystery thriller.

Finished in 2 Days

Worth a credit and more. Makes a lot of Wall Street speak easy to listen to.

The best of Michael Lewis' many excellent books

Where does The Big Short rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

As someone who worked rather extensively on financial regulatory policy during and immediately after the financial crisis, I thought I understood quite a bit about factors contributing to the sub-prime bubble and about structured finance generally. But it was not until I read this book that I really grasped the full extent to which most of the "masters of the universe" on Wall Street had no idea what the f--k their banks and funds were doing in the frenzy of securitization and greed in the years preceding the financial crisis.

For anyone who wants to understand exactly how we went from a booming bull market in 2006 to near economic and financial collapse in 2008, this is the book to read.

Michael Lewis at his incisive best.

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

The mechanics of mortgage "tranching," and the extent to which so many Wall Street firms were genuinely blindsided when the monster they conceived, nurtured, and created, came calling for them. (I loved how Lewis correctly notes that it was Goldman Sachs who first recognized the nature of the systemic risk they did so much to create, and managed to profit from it...love them or hate them (and I put myself in the latter category), its uncanny how those guys are always a step ahead.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

If you read only one book about the causes of the recent financial crisis, let it be Michael Lewis' The Big Short. The thing that makes his story so great is that he tells it through the eyes of the 4 groups of men that had the courage to take a position that opposed the smartest men in the financial industry and, sad to say, our government. They were some of the first to see the fraud behind the subprime meltdown and found a way to make a fortune off the financial systems' crash.

Michael Lewis'; new book gives a slightly less complicated view into the disaster by recounting the stories of these savvy renegades who cashed in on their belief that the system was rotten. In doing so, we end up rooting for people who helped bring about the catastrophe that put a lot of good people out of work.

Still, the stories of these men make clear the greed, stupidity and double standards of a system lacking in grown-up supervision. A system, refueled by tax payer billions, that continues to be filled with the same firms, the same super rich executives, and the same destructive thought processes that disdained the need for government regulation in good times, but insisted on being rescued by government in bad times.

This is a fascinating book that should be read by anyone that wants to better understand the causes of the recent financial crisis. Be careful, as one reader put it, "Don't read this if you want to mellow out. This book will make you furious."

Fascinating read

If you are interested in getting some insight into the credit crisis; and the way the financial system works (or doesn't). This should be on your required reading list. At the end of the book, it reinforces some of the more cynical thoughts I had about the financial market.. Makes you think twice before blindly trusting your retirement savings with your not so favourite broker.

An Absolute Must Read!

I could hardly stop listening to it. The Supreme Court should use this book to figure out who to put in jail. It's a shame at all the absolute crooks this book points out, and they all walked away millionaires.

Great book, highly recommend it.

Outstanding narrative about the financial crisis

I had been resisting Michael Lewis book because there is just so much in the space, good, bad and endless. But on a colleague's recommendation I plunged in. And I was very pleased. Michael Lewis has plumbed a part of the crisis that I had not read about or heard much about before, and he does it with unparalleled humanity and suspense. Like reading a novel. You will not get the broad-brush treatment of the crisis from Lewis' book. For that, the best work I've listened to is Gillian Tett's book (also on Audible). But her book is scholarly in a way that Lewis's is exciting and impossible to put down. I recommend them both. Now I will have to go on and read the Quants (also on Audible), recommended to me by another person I trust at work.

Loved the book and movie

As a novice investor looking to learn more about finance, I found this to be both very educational while having such an intriguing story woven into the inner workings of the bond world.

Nice story telling to understand complex situations!

Very interesting style to describe a complex situation and make it sound interesting for the listener. It takes some effort though to connect the dots between several new concepts if you were not familiar with financial terms. However it is worth the effort as by the end you have a better insight of what caused the last big crisis. Really recommended.