This month\u2019s review is by Richard Bellikoff<\/p>\n
By Michael Lewis<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
This excerpt from the book describes an all-too-common situation in the years before the financial crisis of 2008: the issuing of subprime mortgages to millions of home buyers who clearly could not afford them. Wall Street bundled these mortgages into impenetrably complex securities and peddled them to unwary investors. When the real estate market crashed, it took most of the big Wall Street investment banks and much of the American economy with it.<\/p>\n
Michael Lewis tells this familiar story from an unfamiliar angle: that of a handful of quirky characters who saw it all coming and made millions by shorting the mortgage securities market — in other words, betting against it. They knew it was a house of cards, a black hole, a time bomb — a doomsday machine, as Lewis calls it.<\/p>\n
Lewis\u2019s compelling and disconcerting tale is full of dark humor, painting a picture of Wall Street as a theater of the absurd, a casino where for once the house — the big
\nbanks — lost. He illustrates arcane financial concepts with colorful similes and analogies. You\u2019ll impress your friends and family with your newfound knowledge of collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and floating-rate negative-amortizing mortgages.<\/p>\n
And while you\u2019re at it, watch the movie too. It\u2019s this year\u2019s Oscar winner for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the Library has it on DVD.<\/p>\n
CALL # STATUS: 330.973 LEWIS<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This month\u2019s review is by Richard Bellikoff The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine By Michael Lewis \u201cIn Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000.\u201d This excerpt from the book describes an all-too-common situation in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierramadrelibraryfriends.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierramadrelibraryfriends.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierramadrelibraryfriends.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierramadrelibraryfriends.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierramadrelibraryfriends.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sierramadrelibraryfriends.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sierramadrelibraryfriends.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierramadrelibraryfriends.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sierramadrelibraryfriends.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}