Felix Salmon Reviews The Big Short

March 18, 2010

Here at the B&N Review. A new angle on the story before the story of the financial crisis:

The Big Short is not the story of the crisis, as the crisis is commonly understood. The failure of Lehman brothers and of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the stock-market crash; the bail-out of Detroit; the fevered all-nighters pulled at Treasury and the New York Fed; the fears that the entire global financial system was on the brink of collapse — little if any of that is in this book.

Instead, Lewis has found a different story — one which he started mining for a spectacular cover story in the December 2007 issue of Portfolio magazine, and which has culminated in this book, over two years later. It’s the story of what used to be called the “subprime crisis” before it metastasized into something much larger and more dangerous than that. And it’s also, like all Michael Lewis tales, a human story, which takes us deep inside unique characters like Steve Eisman and Mike Burry.

Michael Lewis is good. And this book is bound to very good. And quite eye-opening–as if we haven’t had our lids stretched far enough in the past two years already.

H/t Balloon Juice.