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The Big Short - Michael Lewis

The inside story of the sub-prime crisis, how greed and dishonesty set the whole financial system up for total meltdown, with Goldman Sachs at the centre. Also covers, briefly, the insanity of the govt bailout - the people who caused the collapse got paid, investors lost their shirts.

Well written (easy enough for me to follow) and interesting.
If you want to understand what happened read it, some contrarians predicted the collapse and made a ton of money out of it. Contrarians are sometimes right, just because lots of lemmings believe something doesn't mean its true.

Its interesting that the smartest people no longer want to be Doctors or physicists, but hedge fund and bond traders.

Also the quality of the available analysis is shockingly low - Moodys, Standard and Poors. It was similar in the tech industry (can't remember the names now) and apparently STRATFOR also pluck garbage out of the air and extrapolate into the stratosphere.

No real blame is attached to individual mortgage holders, the banks didn't care in the slightest who they loaned to or the level of risk, nor did the people who bought the bundled loans from the banks and sold them on - to people who had no clue what they were 'investing' in.

Its also a useful read to understand the BS the banks and US govt are continuing to spout.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2010-06-15 19:01:31)

cl4u53w1t2 wrote:

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/04 … ZZZZZZ.jpg

If you're interested, B&N has a fancy hardcover edition of the complete works of Lewis Carroll.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

cl4u53w1t2 wrote:

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/04 … ZZZZZZ.jpg

If you're interested, B&N has a fancy hardcover edition of the complete works of Lewis Carroll.

costs only 35 $. hmmm.....

Published in 1989, shortly after Michael Lewis ended his career as a bond salesman for Salomon Brothers Inc, Lewis goes into great detail describing his employers and their impact on the explosive growth of bond sales during the 1980s.

He describes Salomon's accent from a time when bonds were not touched by anyone else on Wall Street because of their low yield (pre-1977) until an employee named Bob Dall invented the mortgage backed bond which Lewis Ranieri then took and ran with and turned into a multi-billion dollar empire for as long as Salomon maintained a monopoly on the market (about six years).

It is well outside the scope of the book as it was published twenty-one years ago, but it was interesting to read about the root cause of the current housing crisis and how it came to be. Mortgage backed bonds were originally based on Ginnie Mae mortgages which had government backing and made the bonds easier to sell because the government was on the hook if an individual homeowner defaulted. Ranieri then draped himself in the flag, convinced a boatload of politicians that they could help people with the American Dream and spurred the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac so that all mortgages would be backed by the Federal Government. This led to explosive growth in his sector and ultimately to the first housing boom (and bust) since the end of WWII (and to our own twenty years later).

Lewis also describes the creation of Junk Bonds and hostile takeovers as major industries which fueled the explosive growth of the 80s (sorry Reagan, as with all presidents, you talked a good game but had fuck all to do with the economy).

I give it a 10/10. It's an easy read, even for those without any desire to learn about economics or specifically, bonds. Lewis has a gift for speaking plainly about difficult topics and maintains his wit throughout the book.

im currently reading Virginia Woolf's 'The Waves', which i am finding to be a mind-blowing piece of fiction exploring the psychology and subjectivity of human existence - the characters are developed in a spiralling, chaotic way through a complex narrative that perfectly captures and 'frames' structurally what it is to be human, how it is that we discover who we are and how we perceive the outside world. it rejects the ordinary, linear structures that pre-modernist fiction relied upon, and instead gives an intense, 'snapshot'-like account of several character's experiences as they grow up and discover themselves and each other. it's a masterpiece, but anyway... you guys aren't interested in that.

so here's the non-fiction that is currently opening my mind to new perspectives and theoretical approaches/methods of interpreting the world (culturally, politically, historically, economically and sociologically... any way you want to cook it) - i think a lot of you D&ST people here will enjoy it because of its particular close-focus on british/french and (later) american dealings with the near-east, the arab/islam world and by extension, the entire oriental sphere. it reads like an intelligent, non-polemic, non-generalized chomsky; in short, it is full of all the well-researched and properly-organized theoretical rationality that chomsky's sensational claims and generalized accoutns lack, and offers a comprehensively alternative world-view. i find this work to be far more contemporarily-relevant and interesting than, for example, the marxist view of history and current discourse. enough of my rambling, anyway, here's some official stuff for anyone interested:



Orientalism - Edward W. Said

Orientalism is the 1978 book by Edward Said that has been highly influential in postcolonial studies. In the book, Said writes that "Orientalism" is a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western  attitudes toward the Middle East. This body of scholarship is marked by a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric  prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."[1]  He argued that a long tradition of romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for European and the American  colonial and imperial ambitions. Just as fiercely, he denounced the practice of Arab elites who internalized the US and British orientalists' ideas of Arabic culture.

Said summarised his work in these terms:

"My contention is that Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness. . . . As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge" (Orientalism, p. 204).

Said also wrote:

"My whole point about this system is not that it is a misrepresentation of some Oriental essence — in which I do not for a moment believe — but that it operates as representations usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting" (p. 273).

Principally a study of 19th-century literary discourse and strongly influenced by the work of thinkers like Chomsky, Foucault and Gramsci, Said's work also engages contemporary realities and has clear political implications as well. Orientalism is often classed with postmodernist and postcolonial works that share various degrees of skepticism about representation itself (although a few months before he died, Said said he considers the book to be in the tradition of "humanistic critique" and the Enlightenment).

Last edited by Uzique (2010-06-21 09:26:46)

Uzique wrote:

how about everyone / a few people with enough time all agree to buy one 'common interest' non-fiction book?

then, a week or so later, we can actually discuss it properly? ala a proper 'book club', as opposed to 'show your latest interest'?

would be far more interesting and constructive, imo.

Sure. You'll probably have to do more than a week though, what with people being in the middle of other books (I hate reading multiple at the same time), and taking time to get off their arses and buy it.

But I can do with some non-fiction, rarely do I read those.

PS - Just started reading Kafka on the Shore, which, apparently, is good. I dunno yet.

i'd rather read kafka than murakami. kinda necessary too to 'get' all the allusions and subtle references.

still a pretty good book, though.

I ordered a few books from England a few days ago: D-Day, Stalingrad (which I already read but can't wait to read it again), Berlin by Anthony Beevor, Band of brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (which I'm currently reading and after which my favourite movie series of all time was made) and Mein Kampf by Adolf. Reading these books one at a time under weak light, sitting in a comfy couch and headphones playing Jazz music makes me wan't to freeze time and never do anything else again (except for having sex once in a while).

lazy illiterate fucks. i have to read about 3-4 books a week (an easy week) for my 'occupation', and still propose this idea...

well surely people have to consent to a title first, right. make some suggestions and so forth.

instead you just shat on it because you're too lazy to read one more book a week. too bad.

Uzique wrote:

i'd rather read kafka than murakami.

wait, what?

Down.

My suggestion:



The Awakening by Kate Chopin

Why: simple enough in plot and themes for all of the users to at least be able to contribute something, yet still a work that will hold the attention of those who have read it multiple times. I had to read it in grade 11, and since then I've read it at least 5 more. Simply amazing.

If you choose a shit war book like Generation Kill or something similar, count me out.

nipple = ban

I actually agree with FM, give us a month to acquire and read it, else I think you'll quickly end up with only a couple of readers.

Also, choose a book that's actually good literature, not just a good story, imo. Not that the latter isn't entertaining, but the former is just much more enjoyable. (Not saying your book isn't good Pochsy, never read it). I'm open minded though, and won't be too involved in the choice of book - I'll read whatever you guys throw at me