fullyfoley's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars rounding up to 4, I did not fully understand everything but I don't think Michael could have made a more engrossing story with how complicated this was. I enjoyed the writing style, the analogies, and the lives of these fascinating people.
alykat_reads's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
5.0
I watched The Big Short on Netflix the other day and was curious to know more so I picked this up. As a person with a financial background, has an education in finance and studied the stock market specifically for a semester, this stuff is still complicated to me. Shorts, CDOs, tranches, mortgage backed securities, etc. It's a lot on the financial side. This only furthered my *unpopular opinion* that the stock market is just a huge scam, another in which the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. I recall when the regulations on lending were rolled back in 2017, you know, those ones that were implemented in 2009 after this whole thing, and wondered if people had amnesia from what happened 8 years prior. Yeah, it sucks getting denied for a mortgage, but it's better than being approved for an ARM and then not being able to make the payments in 2 years. There's a reason regulations should be in place, and this is exactly it. The stock market is not infallible and it really concerns me when people think it is. I won't go off more on that tangent, but this is definitely excellent reading to see just how shady the financial sector/Wall Street actually is.
accidentalfolklore's review against another edition
5.0
A difficult book to unpack if you want to learn in detail about the financial instruments that lead to the crash of the global economy in 2008. Definitely not an easy topic to understand, but Lewis does a good job of telling the story to both the lay person and the academic. The film adaptation does an excellent job of making what happened understood and approachable; with that being said the book fills in a lot of gaps that the movie couldn’t accommodate and also provides more background for those looking for a more in depth understanding on the financial industry. I found myself with a lot of questions remaining after this book, but it did fill in a lot of gaps in understanding that I had before reading it (having seen the film adaptation several times).
olichoreno's review against another edition
5.0
Uff, mind-blowing, kinda worried about the BTC up and down, should I sell?
ioana313's review against another edition
4.0
Reading this made my blood boil over the injustice of it all. But the book breaks down each overly complicated topic in a way that is understandable, which I really appreciated.
The only negative I have is that it skipped way too fast in my opinion between characters, to a point I struggled to understand who is who. Overall, though, a very interesting read.
The only negative I have is that it skipped way too fast in my opinion between characters, to a point I struggled to understand who is who. Overall, though, a very interesting read.