Download The Big Short

Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

• Audible.com Release Date: March 15, 2010
• Language: English
• ASIN: B003CN7E42
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #5 in Books > Reference > Writing, Research & Publishing Guides > Writing > Journalism & Nonfiction
    ISBN: B003CN7E42
    Language: English
    Formats: Kindle,Hardcover,Paperback,Audible, Unabridged,Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged,Unknown Binding,
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Download The Big Short

Based on reading Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker and Moneyball, I wondered whether The Big Short would prove to be entertaining and informative. If you've read some of Lewis' books, you might agree that the "entertaining" part would seem to be a reasonably safe bet. It turns out, it is. The Big Short is fast-paced, straightforward, conversational and salty--very much like his earlier works. Indeed, if you didn't know Michael Lewis had written this book, you could probably guess it. It is easy reading and very hard to put down. In short (no pun), The Big Short doesn't disappoint in being entertaining.

In a sense, this book is similar to Moneyball in that Lewis tells his story by following a host of characters that most of us have never heard of--people like Steve Eisman (the closest thing to a main character in the book), Vincent Daniel, Michael Burry, Greg Lippmann, Gene Park, Howie Hubler and others.

How informative is the book? Well, it may seem that Lewis has his work cut out for himself, since the events of the recent financial crisis are already well known. More than that, lots of people have their minds made up concerning who the perps of the last few years are--banks and their aggressive managers, "shadow banks" and their even more aggressive managers, hedge funds, credit default swaps, mortgage brokers, the ratings agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Fed's monetary policy, various federal regulators, short sellers, politicians who over-pushed home ownership, a sensationalist media, the American public that overextending itself with excessive borrowing (or that lied in order to get home loans), housing speculators, etc. The list goes on--and on. Okay, so you already know this.

In the run-up to the housing collapse of 2007-2008, houses weren't merely expensive, they were insanely expensive. Yet just when it seemed that prices couldn't go higher, some fool would come along and pay an enormous sum for a glorified hovel. You didn't have to be a genius to realize that American real estate was overvalued. It did, however, take something special to figure out how to make money off the madness. A group of between ten and twenty people did just that, making the bet of a lifetime that author Michael Lewis calls "The Big Short"

The cast of characters in Lewis's highly readable chronicle of the collapse (and what led to it) includes a misanthropic former medical resident, a money manager who saw himself as Spider-Man, and a pair of men in their thirties who started with $110,00 in a Schwab account they managed from a backyard shed in Berkeley, California. "Each filled a hole," Lewis writes. "Each supplied a missing insight, an attitude to risk which, if more prevalent, might have prevented the catastrophe."

Ever since he left Salomon Brothers to write Liar's Poker, the classic 1989 account of his years as a bond salesman, Lewis has been waiting for a day of reckoning. Little did he realize that the Wall Street he once knew now seems quaint. By 2007, it had morphed into a financial Frankenstein, a "black box" filled with hidden risks on complicated bets that could destroy its creators, but only if the government allowed it to do so.

Let me get the easy part of this out of the way first. Michael Lewis is a remarkably gifted writer, and I have often found his books impossible to put down. When I first read his debut at book authorship, Liar's Poker, I literally read it straight through. I was not alone in this, as Liar's Poker rightfully made Michael a very well-respected author and a very wealthy man. Moneyball, The Blind Side, and numerous other best-sellers built on that reputation. The long-awaited newest contribution from Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, is 264 pages long, and I also read this in 24 hours. However, I doubt many others will feel the same. The book was compelling, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and nothing in the book modified my view that Michael Lewis is one of the most interesting writers of this era. I simply doubt that this book evoke the same response from the masses of people who will buy it. Perhaps I am wrong. So before I begin to disect the important parts of the book (its underlying messages, etc.), I will say that it was another hard-to-put-down book from Michael Lewis. Thumbs up, and all that stuff.

So what did I really think of the book? Well, Lewis should be commended for writing a book on the 2008 financial crisis from the most unique perspective thus far. Rather than focus on the major characters that a plethora of other books have focused on (Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, etc.), Lewis tells his story using some extremely obscure characters as his lead actors: A handful of hedge fund managers who made massive bets against the subprime industry (and by hedge fund managers, I am not referring to high profile, well-known hedgies; I am talking about very, very minor players).

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  The Big Short by Michael Lewis - A 15-minute Instaread Summery
  Thank you for purchasing this Instaread ebook Download the Instaread app and get unlimited summaries of NYTimes Bestsellers. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE Book Overview The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine begins.

  
  

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  Liar’s Poker
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  Dressage Q&A with Janet Foy
  I often tell students that their bits are too small, big, short, or long for their horse! It is important to use the type of bit ... The best thing for you to do is to go to the USEF website and download the photos of legal snaffles. The mouthpieces and the ...

  
  

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  The Big Picture and Other Byte-sized Short Stories
  But I do feel that this Transmission is worth taking a little extra time on your part... even if you feel that you must download this into your Nightly Dream acquisition. For that I would not blame you. Our waking moments are hectic enough, aren't ...

  
  

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  The Red Sky At Night (Short Story)
  'You did download the tide timetable app, like I suggested, didn't you? ... Layla hadn't been able to download the app. ... And the big grassy mound – the 'Tump' as everyone called it – where they'd sit and eat their ice creams, looking out to ...

  
  

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  The Big Picture Interactive Bible Stories in 5 Minutes, Padded Cover
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  The Big Book of Children's Songs
  But it stopped short never to go again When the old man died. Ninety years without slumbering (tick, tock, tick, tock), His life's seconds numbering, (tick, tock, tick, tock), It stopped short never to go again When the old man died.