More Resigned, More Civil, More Intellectual

I wrote yesterday about “The Big Short” by Michael Lewis, and thought I had made it clear that the book was written in a style that made a complex subject very understandable. Apparently at least one of this blog’s readers in Tel Aviv, Israel, did have trouble understanding it, because he thinks you need to be an "intellectual" to do so.

This is not the case. As this reviewer put it:

If you read only one book about the causes of the recent financial crisis, let it be Michael Lewis's, "The Big Short."

That's not because Lewis has put together the most comprehensive or authoritative analysis of all the misdeeds and misjudgments and missed signals that led to the biggest credit bubble the world has known. What makes his account so accessible is that he tells it through the eyes of the managers of three small hedge funds and a Deutsche Bank bond salesman, none of whom you've ever heard of.

All, however, were among the first to see the folly and fraud behind the subprime fiasco, and to find ways to bet against it when everyone else thought them crazy.

Again, this book is highly recommended.

An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex - Aldous Huxley