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    Summary and Analysis of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine: Based on the Book by Michael Lewis
    Summary and Analysis of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine: Based on the Book by Michael Lewis
    Summary and Analysis of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine: Based on the Book by Michael Lewis
    Ebook52 pages39 minutes

    Summary and Analysis of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine: Based on the Book by Michael Lewis

    By Worth Books

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    About this ebook

    So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The Big Short tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Michael Lewis’s book.

    Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.
     
    This short summary and analysis of The Big Short by Michael Lewis includes:
    • Historical context
    • Chapter-by-chapter overviews
    • Character profiles
    • Detailed timeline of events
    • Important quotes
    • Fascinating trivia
    • Glossary of terms
    • Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work
    About The Big Short by Michael Lewis:
     
    The writing was on the wall long before the extent of America’s worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression was made public. The mortgage bond market had become burdened with subprime loans, most of which were deceitful in their origination and ultimately resulted in delinquencies and foreclosures.
     
    Michael Lewis’s The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine takes the reader behind the scenes, introducing the players and Wall Street institutions that unscrupulously helped fuel the housing bubble as well as the few who, not only foresaw the crash, but placed bets on the outcome.
     
    The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 7, 2017
    ISBN9781504044295
    Summary and Analysis of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine: Based on the Book by Michael Lewis
    Author

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      Book preview

      Summary and Analysis of The Big Short - Worth Books

      Contents

      Context

      Overview

      Summary

      Timeline

      Cast of Characters

      Direct Quotes and Analysis

      Trivia

      What’s That Word?

      Critical Response

      About Michael Lewis

      For Your Information

      Bibliography

      Copyright

      Context

      The 2008 financial debacle, otherwise known as the Great Recession, was the worst financial crisis the United States had faced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Over 7 million jobs were lost in the United States. Home prices fell, diminishing the wealth of homeowners. In 2010, there were 157 bank failures. What actually happened?

      Michael Lewis, the author of The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, has written several books, including one on Wall Street called Liar’s Poker. He became intrigued with the Great Recession and followed the losses that big Wall Street firms incurred during the latter part of 2007. He was curious to find out who was on the other side of those losses. As Lewis began writing The Big Short, he discovered the stories of individual investors who suspected something was wrong in the subprime mortgage market and chose to go the opposite way—betting against the market and the big Wall Street firms. They were champions during the recession, winning big while the market plummeted.

      The Big Short was made into a critically acclaimed film in 2015, which brought the story of the heroes and villains of the 2008 financial crisis to a wider audience.

      Overview

      Michael Lewis’s The Big Short is about Wall Street, which is a financial fraternity of sorts. Depending on one’s ambitions, you either love Wall Street or you hate it. The Big Short offers insight into the main players—some villains, some heroes—whose actions ultimately led to the financial free fall of 2008. Delivered with the suspense of a Vegas-style craps game, The Big Short zeroes in on the bond market, a do-as-you-please arena for traders and a huge moneymaker for institutions large and small. It takes readers behind closed doors to the fraudulent activities that led to the biggest financial debacle since the stock market crash of 1929.

      With The Big Short, one learns about the speculators who were so mesmerized by the dangling carrot (in this case, large fortunes) that they overlooked the potential pitfalls associated with subprime mortgage bonds and the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that encapsulated them. Lewis’s book is also a biography of those who saw the misdeeds of some and chose to short the subprime mortgage bond market as a result.

      Wall Street is not for the faint of heart; it is for the opportunists and the risk takers. There will always be winners and losers. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, there was an almost laissez-faire attitude about how Wall Street firms gambled, and by smaller mortgage lenders who had few qualms about

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