Everybody has their thing; the artist, author, director or musician that they can't live without. Maybe you're the type that has to have every Thomas Kinkade print (God forbid), or every Arcade Fire album. My unhealthy Anthony Bourdain bromance is well documented, as is my love for the music making of The Old Crow Medicine Show. The authors on my must-read list include John Krakauer, Wendell Berry, and anything from Malcolm Gladwell. Are you one of those nerds that's seen the new Star Wars Movie twice since Christmas?
Another writer I can't say no to is Michael Lewis. If you're a casual Lewis follower you are surely aware of his books "Moneyball" and "The Blind Side", and the subsequent movies. Both are great, and a great place to start to fall hard for the work of Lewis. Both do something I really love which is to mix numbers with stories. Or maybe it's that he writes stories about numbers? Whatever it is, it works for me.
This weekend I went to my semi local movie mega-plex along with lot of those Wookie Wackos to see the latest Lewis book-turned-movie, "The Big Short". It's easily the best thing I've seen in 2016 (so far)! Starring the likes of Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale it's a dramedy about the economic crash of 2007-08 and the guys who saw it coming. Oh and Bourdain makes a cameo appearance so there's that.
An Idiots Guide To The Big Short
As a Michael Lewis nut I have read the book and now seen the movie. I've gotten in discussions with friends, listened to podcasts and read articles about what happened but still I can only offer you a vague and uniformed synopsis. OK here goes.
Back in the 80's sometime, banks started bundling mortgages into groups of several thousand and selling them to hedge funds and pensions. Its was a safe investment because housing never loses value and is very stable. So both parties made bank which meant more and more of this type of transaction. Eventually all the good mortgages were gone but people still wanted to invest their cash, so the banks started sticking crappy mortgages in the bundles and no one noticed. The folks who got qualified for mortgages had no business getting one. Someone making $30k a year was getting approved to buy a house worth ten times that. But everyone was making money and getting houses and since housing never crashes it was all good.
Well there was this group of wall street outcasts who figured out that the entire enterprise was a house built on sand and that it was destined to crash in spectacular fashion. So they "shorted" or bet against the market so that when it failed they would make some serious coin. As we all know the housing bubble did burst into flames and the entire world economy with it. Maybe you lost your house, I have friends who did.
Oh and it was fraud on the part of the big banks but only one dude went to the slammer for his part. The rest of the bankers got a bailout from you and I and kept on taking home fat bonuses and buying houses in The Hamptons. Basically that's what happened. Do read the book... before you see the movie! If you're busy reading "Go Set a Watchman" read this piece; the-big-short-review-things-you-should-know or listen to Terri Gross interview the director prior to booking your seat; adam-mckay-takes-on-the-2008-economic-crash-in-the-big-short.
Lewis has written two books since "The Big Short".
As I mentioned I have friends who lost their houses and some who lost their jobs in the Great Recession. In his book "Boomerang; Travels In The New Third World", Lewis visits the places hit hardest by the crash. I count myself as lucky to have "survived" the collapse unscathed. During those years I was safely tucked away, working for a non-profit in a place that that been in a slide since the Great Depression; Appalachia. And right as the nation began to emerge from the economic doldrums I moved to a place that was and is booming. Unemployment in Denver is less then four percent, which is great. However my chances for buying a home in a neighborhood worth living in are almost zero.
There is a quote in the book that Michael Lewis overheard in a bar in Washington D.C. "Truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry". Boom, let that percolate in the mind a little!
His latest book "Flash Boys" is about another squirrelly thing going on under our noses in the financial markets. Read it and you'll understand why people like Elizabeth Warren and #bernie2016 are relentless in their crushing of Wall Street. Or you could go ahead a cast your vote for The Donald and see how that works out.
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