The Big Short

Having already watched the film based on this book I knew what to expect going in. Nonetheless I was very much interested throughout, especially the sections following Michael Burry. I must admit that most of the Wall Street jargon was still going over my head even by the end of the book, although I read this in one sitting on a flight which may well have affected my comprehension.

Too Big to Fail was written by a reporter and it was much more about what happened. Michael Lewis doesn't pull any punches with his thoughts on who he thinks is to blame and what he thinks of them in The Big Short.

I liked this a lot, and some of that is no doubt because I agree with Lewis on a number of points.

Context: The movie based on the book is one of my favourites, and that definitely coloured my perspective and set my expectations high.

The writing is just ok. Michael does a good job bringing the characters to life, allowing the reader to more easily keep track of everyone involved. But he comes off a bit insensitive with Michael Berry's (MB) Aspergers. Towards the end of the book he spends a lot of time sort of teasing the reader and building suspense towards the reveal, but the reveal ends up being pretty much meaningless. Readers who are familiar with the autism spectrum will have already guessed/suspected the diagnosis and it serves little to no purpose to the reader aside from giving more context to MB's behaviour.

That being said, that complaint is pretty nit picky. It's an entertaining enough read and the events the book is based on are absolutely fascinating in a morbid way. If you've watched the movie there is little reason to read this book aside from getting a slightly better understanding of the nitty gritty details.

I think I only understood about 30% of this book. That's not a criticism of the book, more a caveat of my review. But it was interesting how much time was spent emphasizing how nobody could understand CODs, credit default swaps etc, and then assuming I understood it.

The overarching plot was interesting and I liked the writing style but I kept waiting for it all to click and the Big Short to be laid bare ... and then it was over. I was left with the understanding that yeah, everything they'd bet on had I guess come true and that was bad and also I must be pretty dense to have made it all the way through this book without really understanding some of the key issues.

I'd probably look them up if I were on my kindle but I listened to this on Audible. I should probably go back and fill in the gaps.

Tl;dr - probably a good book that deserved a more informed audience than me.

Michael Lewis launches his book with a simple concept: with all the losses at the major Wall Street investment banks, who could have foreseen the impending collapse and shorted the investment firms themselves to make an unprecedented return? Among others, he finds a one-eyed financial trader with Aspergers who had the singular focus to see what all of Wall Street refused to see: the explosion of subprime mortgages, the collusion of the rating agencies in promoting CDO's, and the mind-boggling risks and returns on credit default swaps left the entire financial system at a precipice. Lewis tells the stories of a few men who bet on the collapse of the system, and through their experiences unravels the complex web created by the financial firms to pad their profits and to conceal their risks.The greatest outrage of the collapse is not that it could have been foretold: it was.