Greg Bales

The Big Short

Michael Lewis’s The Big Short is the story of the 2007–2008 collapse of the financial markets as experienced by the men (and only men) who had the chutzpah and the capital to sell the markets short and make a lot of money doing so. These men—Steve Eisman and his partners, Michael Burry, and the investment partnership of Charlie Ledley, Jaime Mai, and Ben Hockett—saw the world’s mask and made a bet that one day that mask would come off, despite the fact that everyone around them said, “What mask?” Lewis’s telling of the story is compelling—compelling enough, in fact, that just as I want to suck the blood from a woodchuck’s throbbing neck every time I pick up Walden, while reading The Big Short I was ready to liquidate my 403b and invest it in something that really makes money.¹

¹ But I’m no gambler, and besides, like everybody else’s, my 403b is locked up tight.