Book Log 2016 #9: The Big Short by Michael Lewis

Good news: this is probably the best general explanation of what caused the worldwide financial meltdown about a decade ago. Bad news: it's still not particularly easy to understand.

OK, that may be an overstatement. On one level, it's perfectly easy to understand: financial institutions made ridiculous bets on certain classes of mortgage-based financial instruments, and the rating agencies that should have alerted the public that these instruments were basically failures waiting to happen did not do so. But on the next level, where Lewis explains just how these instruments were created and traded, was hard for me to understand. To be fair, I have zero background in finance, but it was frustrating that I couldn't pick up all the details.

That being said, the easier points to see regarding the failures of the financial industry to properly understand the potential catastrophe are important to keep in mind now that we appear to be heading back to a financial climate where this sort of thing could happen again.