Michael Lewis’s “Big Short” series pulls back the curtain on Wall Street’s mortgage bubble and its collapse. “The Big Short” follows a handful of outsiders who spotted systemic risk early and bet against the market. “Liar’s Poker” is a gritty insider chronicle of Salomon Brothers, greed, and the high-risk culture of the 1980s. Together, the books deliver a riveting portrait of finance, failure, and the few who read the signals.
From mere trainee to lowly geek, to triumphal Big Swinging Dick: that was Michael Lewis' pell-mell progress through the dealing rooms of Salomon Brothers in New York and London during the heady mid-1980s when they were probably the world's most powerful and profitable merchant bank. A true-life Bonfire of the Vanities, funny, frightening, breathless and heartless, his is a tale of hysterical greed and ambition set in an obsessed, enclosed world.
The author examines the causes of the U.S. stock market crash of 2008 and its relation to overpriced real estate, bad mortgages, shareholder demand for excessive profits, and the growth of toxic derivatives.