The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine is a 2010 non-fiction book by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis (author)

Michael Lewis is an American non-fiction author and financial journalist. His bestselling books include The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Liar's Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Panic and Home Game: An...

 about the build-up of the housing and credit bubble during the 2000s. It describes several of the key players in the creation of the credit default swap

Credit default swap

A credit default swap is similar to a traditional insurance policy, in as much as it obliges the seller of the CDS to compensate the buyer in the event of loan default...

 market that sought to bet against the collateralized debt obligation

Collateralized debt obligation

Collateralized debt obligations are a type of structured asset-backed security with multiple "tranches" that are issued by special purpose entities and collateralized by debt obligations including bonds and loans. Each tranche offers a varying degree of risk and return so as to meet investor demand...

 (CDO) bubble and thus ended up profiting from the financial crisis of 2007–2010. The book also highlights the eccentric nature of the type of person who bets against the market or goes against the grain. The work follows people who believed the bubble was going to burst, like Meredith Whitney

Meredith Whitney

Meredith Ann Whitney is a banking analyst and frequent contributor to CNBC, Fox Business, and Bloomberg News programs. Based in New York City, Whitney manages her own advisory firm, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group LLC, where she produces company-specific equity research on financial institutions...

, who predicted the demise of Citigroup

Citigroup

Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Citigroup was formed from one of the world's largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate...

 and Bear Stearns

Bear Stearns

The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. based in New York City, was a global investment bank and securities trading and brokerage, until its sale to JPMorgan Chase in 2008 during the global financial crisis and recession...

; Steve Eisman

Steve Eisman

Steve Eisman is a money manager famous for shorting securitized subprime home mortgages. Eisman currently works for FrontPoint Partners, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley.-FrontPoint Partners:...

, an anti-social hedge fund

Hedge fund

A hedge fund is a private pool of capital actively managed by an investment adviser. Hedge funds are only open for investment to a limited number of accredited or qualified investors who meet criteria set by regulators. These investors can be institutions, such as pension funds, university...

 manager; Greg Lippmann, a Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank AG is a global financial service company with its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. It employs more than 100,000 people in over 70 countries, and has a large presence in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific and the emerging markets...

 trader, who created the first CDO market by matching buyers and sellers; the founders of Cornwall Capital

Cornwall Capital

Cornwall Capital is a New York City based private financial investment corporation. It was profiled in the book The Big Short by Michael Lewis as one of a handful of investors in the world that correctly foresaw and profited from the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007.Cornwall Capital was founded in...

, who started a hedge fund in their garage with $100,000 and built it into $120 million when the market crashed; and Dr. Michael Burry

Michael Burry

Michael Burry is founder of the Scion Capital LLC hedge fund, which he ran from 2000 until 2008, when he closed the fund to focus on his own personal investments. Burry was one of the first investors in the world to recognize and invest in the impending subprime mortgage crisis...

, an ex-neurologist

Neurologist

A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...

 who created Scion Capital despite suffering from blindness

Blindness

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...

 in one eye and Asperger's syndrome. The book also highlights some of the biggest losses created by the market crash: like Merrill's $300 million mezzanine CDO

CDO

CDO may refer to:* Cagayan de Oro, a city that lies along the northern coastline of Mindanao island, Philippines.* Canyon del Oro High School, a public school in Oro Valley, Arizona, USA....

 manager Wing Chau; Howie Hubler, infamously known as the person who lost $9 billion in one trade, the largest single loss in history; and Joseph Cassano

Joseph Cassano

Joseph J. "Joe" Cassano is an American insurance executive who was an officer at AIG Financial Products from the division's founding in 1987 until his resignation in February 2008. Cassano is considered a key figure in the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009...

's AIG Financial Products

AIG Financial Products

AIG Financial Products Corporation. is a subsidiary of the American International Group, headquartered in Fairfield, CT, with major operations in London, it is currently in the process of winding down all of its operations. The collapse of AIG Financial Products is considered to have played a...

, which suffered over $99 billion in losses.

It was shortlisted for the 2010 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award

Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award

Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award is an annual award given to the best business book of the year as determined by the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs. It aims to find the book that has ‘the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues.’ The...

. It spent 28 weeks on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list.

External Links

• The Big Short, at W. W. Norton
  W. W. Norton
  W. W. Norton & Company is an independent American book publishing company based in New York City. It is well known for its "Norton Anthologies", particularly the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the "Norton Critical Editions" series of texts which are frequently assigned in university...
  
  (official book site)
• 'Shorting our Future', a review of The Big Short in The Oxonian Review