The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Author Michael Lewis reflects back on his brief stint as a corporate bond salesman in the 1980s, when enormous sums of money are won and lost by barely qualified financiers just out of college. Much of what is traded turns out to be worthless, and many scandals erupt.

In the decades that follow, Lewis keeps expecting to hear that investment banking has finally gotten its comeuppance—that the entire house of cards has collapsed—but the people involved continue to work, often incompetently, and the only real change is that the amounts at play grow ever larger.

Then, in late 2007, financial analyst Meredith Whitney issues a warning that Citigroup’s subprime mortgage bond investments have been so badly mismanaged that it must severely cut its dividend or face bankruptcy. Her prediction proves right, and in the coming months she makes similar claims about other banks, but they respond by insisting that they have patched things up. They are proved wrong; investment banks begin to collapse, and the market crashes.

Lewis asks Whitney if she knows anyone who has anticipated the disaster, made bets against the subprime market, and won big. She lists several names, including Steve Eisman.