Book Review: The Big Short, by Michael Lewis (2010)

For some reason I've been reading a lot of finance-related books (that's FYE-nants for those not in the business). Not sure what touched-off this latest reading frenzy but I'm pretty sure it was finding a copy of The Big Short in the clearance section of Half Price Books and realizing I was way, way overdue in reading this the most famous book about the 2008 financial crisis.

This topic is particularly interesting to me because during 2005 - 2008 I was a reporter in New York covering the asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities market, the very topic of this book. It was like reading about the details and history of a war I was a mere foot soldier in (or, let's face it, more of an innocent bystander with a notebook). Even cooler, I was at the same industry conference Michael Lewis talks about at the end of the book (albeit, a year before) and had even met and interviewed some of the people he talks about in the book like the late Ace Greenburg, of Bear Stearns, the famous research analyst Brad Hintz, and one-time securitzation impresario John Devaney. So in other words: I wrote The Big Short.

Seriously, if you're looking for a book, the book, that will help you understand what a collateralized debt obligation is, what a subprime mortgage backed security is, how Wall Street greed caused our entire economy to come to an almost complete collapse in 2007-2008, and just what in the hell happened to cause all this...then read The Big Short.

In case you've not read his other books -- Liar's Poker and Moneyball, to name a couple -- Michael Lewis is not only a master story-teller but he can also breathe life into subjects that are mind-numbingly complex for the average citizen like you or me, namely structured financial products. But he can do that precisely because he homes in on the stories of the people involved, and that's -- in my opinion -- what you really need in order to be able to understand a complex subject: a narrative.

In my efforts to better understand the industry I've spent my career adjacent to, I've read text books, news articles, even listened to the odd lecture on YouTube when I couldn't understand something. But the best way to completely understand a subject is to read a book like The Big Short that turns the subject into a "story" with characters, motivations, obstacles, heroes, villains, conflict, etc. That way the subject matter comes to life and ultimately seems much, much less complex.

What am I saying here? Read The Big Short.