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The Big Short
- Inside the Doomsday Machine
- Narrated by: Jesse Boggs
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Categories: Money & Finance, Economics
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Michael Lewis returns to the financial world to give listeners a ringside seat as the biggest news story in years prepares to hit Wall Street....
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Michael Lewis at it again
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Liar's Poker
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It was wonderful to be young and working on Wall Street in the 1980s - never had so many 24-year-olds made so much money in so little time. In this shrewd and wickedly funny audiobook, Michael Lewis describes an astonishing era and his own rake's progress through a powerful investment bank.
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Enjoyable, but abridged
- By Danny on 2020-09-14
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Moneyball
- The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
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Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.
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This book is not about baseball!
- By Wesley on 2019-02-19
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Too Big to Fail
- The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System - and Themselves
- Written by: Andrew Ross Sorkin
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A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami.
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- By R on 2018-12-15
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Boomerang
- Travels in the New Third World
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The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.
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Great book!
- By Colin Ferguson on 2018-07-21
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The Smartest Guys in the Room
- The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
- Written by: Bethany McLean
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The definitive volume on Enron's amazing rise and scandalous fall, from an award-winning team of Fortune investigative reporters.
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exhaustive account of the Enron scandal
- By Sam on 2019-10-07
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Flash Boys
- A Wall Street Revolt
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Michael Lewis returns to the financial world to give listeners a ringside seat as the biggest news story in years prepares to hit Wall Street....
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Michael Lewis at it again
- By Jonathan Brown on 2018-05-13
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Liar's Poker
- Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis
- Length: 3 hrs
- Abridged
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Overall
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It was wonderful to be young and working on Wall Street in the 1980s - never had so many 24-year-olds made so much money in so little time. In this shrewd and wickedly funny audiobook, Michael Lewis describes an astonishing era and his own rake's progress through a powerful investment bank.
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Enjoyable, but abridged
- By Danny on 2020-09-14
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Moneyball
- The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
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Moneyball is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.
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This book is not about baseball!
- By Wesley on 2019-02-19
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Too Big to Fail
- The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System - and Themselves
- Written by: Andrew Ross Sorkin
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 21 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times reporter. Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true, behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression developed into a global tsunami.
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- By R on 2018-12-15
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Boomerang
- Travels in the New Third World
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Dylan Baker
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
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The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish.
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Great book!
- By Colin Ferguson on 2018-07-21
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The Smartest Guys in the Room
- The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
- Written by: Bethany McLean
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 22 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The definitive volume on Enron's amazing rise and scandalous fall, from an award-winning team of Fortune investigative reporters.
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exhaustive account of the Enron scandal
- By Sam on 2019-10-07
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The Undoing Project
- A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Forty years ago Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred systematically when forced to make judgments about uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made Michael Lewis' work possible.
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Probably Lewis’s worst book
- By Frederic Dion on 2020-02-04
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The Fifth Risk
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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What happens when the President of the United States governs one Tweet at a time? When the elected leader of the free world may not have a firm grasp on the names of government agencies, much less an understanding of their intricate inner-workings? In the days following the 2016 inauguration, government personnel searched for answers that didn’t exist, while White House staff scoured halls for employees who would never be appointed.
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Elections have consequences
- By Amazon Customer on 2019-01-09
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Den of Thieves
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- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart shows for the first time how four of the biggest names on Wall Street - Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine - created the greatest insider-trading ring in financial history and almost walked away with billions - until a team of downtrodden detectives triumphed over some of America's most expensive lawyers to bring this powerful quartet to justice.
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Incredible Narration
- By NegresseIntensa on 2019-02-08
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Panic!
- The Story of Modern Financial Insanity
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Blair Hardman, Jesse Boggs
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
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A masterful account of today's money culture, showing how the underpricing of risk leads to catastrophe. With his trademark humor and brilliant anecdotes, Michael Lewis paints the mood and market factors leading up to each event, weaves contemporary accounts to show what people thought was happening at the time, and then, with the luxury of hindsight, analyzes what actually happened and what we should have learned from experience.
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When Genius Failed
- The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
- Written by: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Roger Lowenstein
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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When Genius Failed is the cautionary financial tale of our time, the gripping saga of what happened when an elite group of investors believed they could actually deconstruct risk and use virtually limitless leverage to create limitless wealth. In Roger Lowenstein's hands, it is a brilliant tale peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama.
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A bit too dry for my liking
- By Rupert on 2019-04-29
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The New New Thing
- A Silicon Valley Story
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Bruce Reizen
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis sets out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world's most important technology entrepreneur, the man who embodies the spirit of the coming age. He finds him in Jim Clark, who is about to create his third, separate, billion-dollar company: first Silicon Graphics, then Netscape - which launched the Information Age - and now Healtheon, a startup that may turn the $1 trillion healthcare industry on its head.
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...
- By Anis on 2020-12-20
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You Can Be a Stock Market Genius
- Written by: Joel Greenblatt
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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A comprehensive and practical guide to the stock market from a successful fund manager - filled with case studies, important background information, and all the tools you’ll need to become a stock market genius. Fund manager Joel Greenblatt has been beating the Dow (with returns of 50 percent a year) for more than a decade. And now, in this highly accessible guide, he’s going to show you how to do it, too. You’re about to discover investment opportunities that portfolio managers, business-school professors, and top investment experts regularly miss.
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classic
- By remi soare on 2020-12-05
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The Money Culture
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Alexander Cendese
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of ’29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade. In these trenchant, often hilarious true tales we meet the colorful movers and shakers who commanded the headlines and rewrote the rules.
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The Buy Side
- A Wall Street Trader's Tale of Spectacular Excess
- Written by: Turney Duff
- Narrated by: Turney Duff
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A remarkable writing debut, filled with indelible moments, The Buy Side shows as no book ever has the rewards – and dizzying temptations – of making a living on the Street.
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Brilliant
- By matthew n**** on 2020-04-14
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Has Anyone Seen the President?
- Written by: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis
- Length: 54 mins
- Original Recording
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In this audio investigation - unavailable in book form - Lewis narrates his 2018 report from Washington originally published in Bloomberg View. From inside the White House press room - which Lewis describes as having "the cramped, uncared-for feel of a public toilet" - to a balcony overlooking "a sea of white people" in the Trump International Hotel, to Steve Bannon's Capitol Hill townhouse, where he joins the former campaign CEO to watch the State of the Union address, Lewis takes listeners on an unforgettable behind-the-scenes tour.
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good story, not as captivating as most Lewis books
- By Sean on 2019-05-12
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The Greatest Trade Ever
- The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History
- Written by: Gregory Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected--that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall. Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing. He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. He just wasn't sure how to do it....
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Barbarians at the Gate
- The Fall of RJR Nabisco
- Written by: Bryan Burrough, John Helyar
- Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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Barbarians at the Gate has been called one of the most influential business books of all time, the definitive account of the largest takeover in Wall Street history. Bryan Burrough's and John Helyer's account of the frenzy that overtook Wall Street in October and November of 1988 gives us not only a detailed look at financial operations at the highest levels but a richly textured social history of wealth in the twilight of the Reagan era.
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Narrator slurs his words
- By Junashi on 2018-10-11
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.
What the critics say
“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)
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What listeners say about The Big Short
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cal
- 2021-01-26
A great book overall
Great story line, very interesting and an enjoyable listen. The narrator does a great job also.
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- caleb williamson
- 2020-07-14
As Entertaining as the film!
A great book!! If you loved the movie, you will love the book! I will certainly listen to it again.
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- BHRamsay
- 2020-01-11
Better than the movie
Like many I found this book because of the 2015 movie it spawned but the storyline behind the scenes is occasionally much more terrifying. I can't tell you how often I found myself muttering"Why didn't they leave such-&-such a scene as it actually happened. Though I'm shocked by how often I found they didn't change anything and scenes played out exactly as depicted with all the black humor and terrible implications unchecked.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2019-07-09
Amazing read. Time well spent.
Aside from the incredibly engaging story, I found this book to be an educational masterpiece in the context of a lay-person’s intro to the bond, lending, and equity market on Wall Street. A must read for anyone who wants to understand what happened in 2007/2008 during the financial crisis.
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- Agnostic Trader
- 2018-09-13
Lewis is the boss
Lewis has a unique ability to make the complex into the simple, especially when it come to financial matters. He's a real treasure and I'm so glad he gave up bond trading to write books for us. The narration is well done here. No complaints.
#Audible1
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- Kindle Customer
- 2018-06-09
Terrific
Too bad what happens but the story is explained in an amazing fashion. Loved it.
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- Jay
- 2010-03-23
Informative and Engaging
Lewis should be heralded for the way he takes a very complex idea (sub-prime mortgage default swap collateral debt obligations) and breaks it down into easy-to-understand language. If you were at all confused about how the financial system tanked in 2008, you'll be glad you read this book and also pretty disgusted at the kind of magical thinking that went on on Wall Street. But what makes this book readable is his characterization of three oracular entities (Mike Burry, Steve Eisman, and the Cornwall Capital Group) that foresaw the collapse before anyone else ever did. The characters come across as misanthropic, boisterous, and naive respectively and allow the reader to see the tragedy through three very different perspectives. A read you won't want to put down (...or turn off).
65 people found this helpful
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- Jillie
- 2010-03-31
Finally, I understand what happened!
I could not believe how captivated I was by this book from start to finish. I have no interest in Wall Street, stocks, bonds etc, but this book brought that world to life for me. If you have ever wondered what caused the meltdown in our economy this book will answer that question and then some. It was scary, entertaining and most of all a cautionary education about the true nature of our economy and it's fragility. Download it and listen... you will never look at your investments the same way again.
59 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 2013-11-21
One of My Favorite Analysis
I have read a bunch of books about the 2007 financial crash. By focusing on the people that made a lot of money from the crash, this book explains quite clearly the underlying causes of the crash. Unfortunately this book requires a bit of understanding of how markets and financial products work. If you have these basic understandings, this is the best of the bunch of books examining the 2007 crisis. Not only were the characters quite fun to read about, but the story helped explain the underlying causes of the crisis in an interesting and compelling way. I generally recommend this as a great place to start if you want to understand the mechanics of what happened in the financial crisis of 2007.
24 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 2010-04-03
Entertaining, Educational and FUN
This is fun and funny, interesting and educational. It did everything I was hoping for and more. It delved into both the technical details and personalities of the sub-prime meltdown. It reads like a history but is kept interesting by interweaving finance, personalities, politics and humanity. Anyone who is interested in the meltdown or just interested in the stories of the very few people that saw it coming, this is a must read.
9 people found this helpful
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- Michael Moore
- 2010-04-01
Explaining the Inexplicable
How could the world's most advanced and enlightened economy allow an irresponsible, greedy and self-deluded congregation of Wall Street bankers to accumulate such gargantuan financial losses that the whole country was imperiled? For, as Churchill might have put it, never in the realm of economic activity have so many suffered so much at the hands of so irresponsible a group of bankers.
Michael Lewis attempts to answer this question through the stories of the relatively few professional investors who took the time to dig into the subprime mortgage market and perform careful credit analysis of the loan quality underpinning the whole market. What they found was not surprising. It was a credit disaster waiting to happen. What is revealing is the reception they received from mainline Wall Street firms, their own investors, and the credit rating agencies. In nearly all cases their views were discounted ("it could never happen in the US housing market;" "subprime loan losses will not all happen at the same time") and they were dismissed as misfits. The Wall Street money machine, fueled by huge financial rewards, animal spirits and a "we know better" culture, simply moved on heedlessly to even greater risks and excess. Well worth the read, but I would start with David Faber's book ("Then the Roof Caved In") if you are new to the mortgage-backed security world of Wall Street.
25 people found this helpful
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- John
- 2010-04-06
Sad It Ended...
I was actually bummed out that the book ended. This book raised the bar for me as to what I would be willing to swallow in my audiobook collection. Very well narrated, and extremely well written for it's category. The author doesn't over dramatize it, but adds enough of the characters personality to keep you interested during the dryer "explanation of what a CDS and CDO is for the 100th time because the average reader by now probably still doesn't understand what we are listening to"....
5 people found this helpful
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- A reader
- 2010-03-21
Very good, very infuriating, but a little narrow
First off, this book tells its story well - its a story of the traders who saw the subprime crisis coming, and, by examining how they managed to bet against the market, the book also illuminates exactly how the subprime debacle occurred. Lewis does a wonderful job showing how so many very smart people made so many stupid assumptions, based on a mix of bad data, bad organizations ("its not my job to worry"), and the most infuriating forms of cheating, lying, and bad-dealing.
My problem with the book, and it is a minor one, is that by staying so narrowly focused on this topic, it tends to follow the progression of a few traders and managers throughout the book, often in great detail. This can make it hard to follow the larger story of the context and economic dealings that surround "The Big Short", especially in audiobook format. Also, since not all of the characters are equally interesting, attention can also wander during parts. Additionally, I suspect that the truly uninitiated will be somewhat confused by terminology - the book assumes you know what "hedging" is and how it works from near the beginning, for example.
While the reader is good, but not great, Lewis is still a great writer, and the story is compact, fascinating, and important. I recommend it, but perhaps only to those who know a little about the subprime crisis to begin with.
68 people found this helpful
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- Joel D Offenberg
- 2010-04-18
Interesting, informative with a sense of doom...
In 2007-8, defaults on low-cost loans to risky (sub-prime) borrowers nearly took the entire financial edifice down. What happened?
Michael Lewis' book goes a long way to explaining how a few bad mortgages caused the near-implosion of the entire American financial system in 2007-8. He goes into the nature of the individuals and players who were making these investments (bets), how they made the decisions they made and what the implications were.
In addition to studying characters and events, Lewis provides a good explanation of the underlying nature of the investments...mortgage-backed bonds, Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO's) and Credit Default Swaps (CDS's) that led to the investment crisis, and how they came to become such a large part of various investment strategies. If you wanted to know how these items worked and how they evolved into such a major part of the economy, this is a good place. A deep understanding of Wall Street is not needed.
The book is well-written. The characters are engaging and there is enough dark humor to keep it from getting boring. It's perhaps more of a story and a little less academic than one might expect. There are a few omissions...for example, I would have like to have learned more about the rating companies' surprising willingness to give high ratings to questionable securities (Lewis talked about it, but I was left wondering about more of the details of that aspect of the story).
Jesse Boggs's reading is great. He really seems connected with the author's content.
In conclusion, "The Big Short" is somewhat like Greek tragedy...the story is compelling, but the gods are toying with everyone and the listener knows the unhappy ending before the book even starts.
16 people found this helpful
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- Robert
- 2011-04-16
Not an easy read without knowledge of stock market
Great storytelling and narration. However, I cannot say I understood as much here as I did reading Michio Kaku's book on parallel universes and I knew nothing of either subject when I began each book. Noting the popularity of The Big Short, I cannot help but feel a lot of people must understand financial instruments much better than I and I need to study up on the subject. The book was long on the process that brought the world to its financial knees and quite a bit shorter on the story of the people involved.
10 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 2010-04-07
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.
4 people found this helpful