The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Format: Hardcover Language: English ISBN: 0393072231 ISBN13: 9780393072235 Release Date: March 2010 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Length: 288 Pages Weight: 1.03 lbs. Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.2" When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine, and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking. The crucial question is this: Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artif