Book Review: The Big Short

The Big Short
By Michael Lewis

****/5

The Doomsday Machine explained

If you have ever wondered about the American financial crisis and not found comprehensible answers in financial newspapers and magazines, then this book is for you. Michael has a confident and easily understandable writing in this latest non-fiction. He presents not just the big banks workings but gives us a personal introduction to the people behind it. He mentions a bunch of hedge fund operators who knew what tragedy was coming and invested wisely. The book takes us on the journey with insights from these hedge fund investors’ point of view. It at once puts us on the front seat of this CDO and credit swap machinery. It helps us understand the complicated mortgage disaster as seen by the eyes of visionary investors who knew the bubble was about to burst into disastrous proportions.

The characters in this book is what brings the book alive. It helps us know the business in Wall Street as analysed by these characters, what they do, why they did do something and how they profited during the biggest recent collapse in the financial market.

There is no better guide than this one with characters and explanations taking you inside the system and showing you what happened, why and how.