The credit default swaps and useless thin air creation of value have plagued the economy in ways similar to that of the Dark Ages. I am a massive fan of that period of time in the sense that turmoil paves for progress, but can simultaneously work the other way around (especially in the case of the book). Our economy has been through that type of age a few times already only in the past century. We are in a better time with regards to physical health. Mental health possibly hasn't changed much since then and same with intelligence when talking about economics. One aspect in the mainstream human character that has gotten worse is the humanity coupled with empathy. We are all humans and all desire greed, vanity, fallacy, and iniquity to some degree. Because of that, I certainly understand the buying of subprime mortgage bonds which led to the crash. Michael Burry is not depicted as some kind of heathen criminal despite the effect he had on the world. In modern day, his type of scheme based thievery would not be considered deviant enough to constitute crime. Truth be told, he simply saw what was going to happen, so he capitalized on it. If he didn't do it, then someone else would have, and they'd be the rich guy. He and Eisman are nothing short of geniuses who had the capabilities of transcending groupthink. Fiat engineering is theoretically and technically not stealing in accordance to the time and space currently inhabited by this collective consciousness of man-made laws. Collapses during the time of the mid 2000s seemed predictable to most analysts, but the masses of investors simply weren't seeing the data while taking it for what was actually happening. Delusions of grandeur coupled with backwards rationalizations of financial security really set off a domino effect across the market. Volatility completely blasted off into the galaxy. The lack of real tangible value which can be modeled by the gold standard was the antimatter of the time to investors in financial markets. Subprime mortgage loans, although seeming like real a matter, was cunningly being marketed with that veil of legitimacy. Assets were bunk in purest sense. The public got robbed by these wicked men with every loophole in place to keep the schemers safe. The game of life can be easily played in the field of Wall Street. In early 2005, Bear Stearns, Merril Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley all went headfirst into it with elbows deep in the mud. The endless loop of making loans that couldn't be repaid and dishing them out again to not get paid for is a surefire way to annihilate an economy, where the public is simply getting houses to live in because they couldn't pay for it. Lying to get there was not against the law. Trickery was their method for financial sales. Assets of real value such as houses were being sold to buyers whose loans became another asset which would be deemed mortgage backed securities. Buying these types of financial assets meant that insolvency was the means to profits and gains. Growth meant regression. Humans had figured a way to make the object of nothing become a path to wealth. Fortunately, that backfired for the giant institutions. Unfortunately, some were actually too big to fail and got bailed out so that the world's economy didn't have to implode. Luckily, we didn't get sent back to the stone age, but the control of the banks are still too extreme. The road to entering the field was not easy for Steve Eisman. Albeit, both of his parents were in the profession of securities brokerage. He decided to follow that path and then some, even to the degree of the cosmos. In the beginning, he had just graduated law school at Harvard. Ways in which the excessively complicated subprime mortgage market worked still did not make full sense. The system was rigged to fail, so they needed to have wolves as lenders. They put on sheep's clothing so that the public would "buy in" to "the dream". Home equity loans were sought after by the emerging new generation of families in American culture. Eventually, the subprime mortgage market along with investments in residential properties began leading a cult-like following. Groupthink caused a veil of false hope for those looking for the magic pill to solve their money issues. The subprime lenders blackened that false hope by assuring that what was too good to be true was actually too good to not be true. They did this by not disclosing the figures in the books and more importantly how they came about. The juggle of cash flow insolvency was the fundamental principle in this form of fiat engineering. The funds which were lent during the time of America's economic expansion during the fail-bond lending up until 1998 needed a way to dissipate in a productive way. Eisman played a huge role in discerning who the bad guys were in this evil movement. Household Finance Corporation walked fully in the market with true shoes of deception. They figured a way to package lies into the deals with the adding of "effective" on to "interest rates". That way, the rate of interest would be much higher than what was perceived and told to be. Borrowers knew about the issue at hand after Eisman blew their cover, but the United States did absolutely nothing on the federal level. They were let off with a simple slap on wrists. Eisman experienced the gloom of knowledge of evil in the field of finance, so that led him to create his own hedge fund. The dissipation of the subprime mortgage bonds started with the name of this book. An intelligent, cunning man named Michael Burry was experienced and knowledgeable in the credit default swap. He thought up of an idea to short bonds that were going dead for the purpose of monetary gain. The credit default swap was a perfect way to take advantage of those who took advantage of the masses who originally got taken advantage of. He went to Wall Street so that they would allow the introduction of swaps to these mortgage bonds. The purpose was to allow an exchange for the bunk bonds in exchange for a short. In essence, he sought a way to gamble on the downturn of the market. His passion for this trade led to him to create a blog which attracted tentative surveillance by Wall Street. Soon enough, he started his own fund called Scion Capital. Large investment firms from Gotham to Goldman became revolved around his trade. He had Gotham (among others, including one closely associated with Warren Buffet) investing money into his company. By the time mid 2005 hit, he began experiencing massive upward success while the market was in a downward spiral. The help of Deutsche bank was a crucial part of his success among many others where he purchased credit default swaps from. The events detailed throughout the book with its insurmountable results in the accumulating of funds was not a mere run of coincidence and chance. Skill and effort held a factor in the process. Ultimately, time and chance trump all the intelligence and knowledge, but having the skill set is the baseline for what creates growth. The effective creation of the credit default swap was essentially orchestrated by Burry in the purest sense. His brainchild was literally the market for enormous shorts in subprime mortgage default trading. While Burry had over $1 billion dollar in funds from various large investors, Eisman was still being bitter at the whole happening of the default into insolvency subprime market. However, the bitterness would soon end when he himself saw hope in the swapping out of these subprime loans. He found hope in abolishing the wickedness and folly of these bunk bonds. FrontPoint allowed him to live out of his purpose in destroying what he hated about finance. The worst idea in all of the corrupt groupthink within the bad securities industry was the thought that housing prices would never fall. Equally, one could also argue the trust in the bond rating system being the worst collectively held belief. When trust goes sour, the greedy take advantage of the lies received. An entire industry arises out of credit default swaps warring against the collateralized debt obligations. Investors would have to choose which side to choose for the relatively short long-term investment. Eisman and Burry whole heartedly bet against the subprime bonds, so they naturally and strategically bought into the fortune producing CDS financial assets. The ideal method was to purchase as many credit default swaps as possible while selling as many subprime mortgages as the market permitted. Morgan Stanley had two soulless men who would do the dirty work of summoning funds from fraud. Their plan of tricking the market in one that was "too big to fail" in the context of groupthink was exactly what backfired. Karma got back at him from his intentional heartlessness. Morgan Stanley assisted the main bad guy by the name of Hubler in opening up GPCG. This credit group sold defaults like hot cakes. They were betting the defaults would never occur. The scenario they imagined was so grim that they'd backwards rationalize any way an economic collapse would not be imminent from collateralized debt obligations, regardless of how obvious the domino effect of worthless bonds were defaulting across the market like a wildfire. The competition between he and Lippman came to a halt when he demanded his $1.2 billion which he earned from the shorts. On the other hand, reckless lack of information seeking caused Hubler to lose a record breaking $9 billion for Morgan Stanley. They inevitably fired him. By the time 2008 hit, Eisman and Burry were of the few to make money off of their own efforts. They were not bailed out like the banks, but instead, their bail into the collapse of the economy into default was what produced their riches. Principles of Real Estate is the basis of producing wealth out of accurate speculation into the housing market. Although this book was purely based on the stock market's fluctuation, the market for houses had 100% correlation to everything having to do with mortgage backed securities, subprime lending, and the default for the inevitable mortgages. The American Dream of houses, family, and money to support a lavish lifestyle lead to greed. This was about to the point of obliteration of that goal. Instead, it led to the desire of dominating the people to become kings in the modern day sense. In the same way that investors and realtors can be ruthless in conducting business transactions, the players in the game of default dealing took it and magnified the greedy intentions about a thousand fold. The one thing that all types of successful brokers have that never differs is the persistence to close a deal. Lenders to those who couldn't possibly afford a house may have had some sympathy, but in their field, it is either eat the meal or have it eat you. During the subprime lending craze, anybody could get a house. I once heard of a report of a man who worked for an hourly wage of $10 purchasing a $400,000 house. No income check was needed during that time. Even if they did do a credit check, the credit score became disregarded. Ethics rarely played a role in the midst of accumulating wealth in a wicked scheme of blindly expanding insolvency. On the micro level, home buyers demanded homes. In the macro sense, Eisman and Burry knew that they couldn't possibly pay it back. However, their job is not to ensure the strength of the public's credit. Their duty in the ethics sector was almost non-existent. The two were on the outside of the actual real estate part, but everything they did had directly to do with the values of homes and the overall health of the housing market. They foresaw the health deteriorating, so they literally placed a bet that it would reach the point of needing life support. The bailouts have kept our economy on that near-death life support for seven years now. An insane influx of homebuyers came in just at the right time for Eisman and Burry. During the mid 2000s, I remember a waiting list that builders had set up for the buyers. Because of the fact that demand was so high, overnight lines in front of the office even appeared. Property values kept on skyrocketing during the early 2000s and many believed average residential housing prices would reach $1 million by around this time. Demand for houses kept rising since it was so easy for people to buy homes for nothing. Every type of payment option existed during that time. In 2004, hardly enough houses were being built to keep up with the demand for homes by the public. Prices kept on rising because the market became a balls to the wall free for all. They could have charged whatever price they wanted to since it was not at all a factor for the ones purchasing the homes. The only factor was a "yes" from the lender. Lenders approved everything because it was too simple and easy to close a deal that way. With human brains naturally going with the flow to achieve the goal, nobody cared about the credit effect building across the country. The public who wanted to buy homes they couldn't afford had the ability to undergo the ultimate goal of the human race. That is, to maximize output while minimizing effort/input. They didn't at all consider possible bankruptcy in the future. The focus on short term results while disregarding all signs which point to future catastrophe was the cause of this. Every player knew what they were doing. No interest was present on protecting the public. They were the sheep or gazelle which the wolves would end up eating. In the end, however, some wolves got eaten by more intelligent ones. Some of them got saved by the head honcho wolf demon which ended up bailing them out. The simple concept of a CDO seems far to sketchy to be traded on the market. Lower level trading on the single residential mortgages stem up to the traders in tranches. AAA tranches could contain some of the worst mortgage backed securities known to man. Bundling the risk into one investment "product" does nothing but create unnecessary complexity. Many of the times, investors hardly knew exactly which investments were in each tranche. Making an informed decision on investing became hard when buying public home loans became pooled together. Being well diversified through these assets wasn't the ideal diversification. Vast amounts of these were being overrated. Before the bubble burst, a false sense of euphoria plagued investors. Nobody saw the wave of debt coming. Even if they did, hardly anyone cared about the middle class. They were the victims for the players to feed on. Truly, the collapse and all the different factors which led up to it show how dog eat dog this system was. Taking human nature and evolution to in a way weed out the ones not fit for survival in the tribe. Starting from the bottom, realtors just wanted to close a deal to increase their annual income. The difficulty of being ethical was at an all time high for agents in real estate. Loan officers wanted to make a loan. Having consideration towards a client running headfirst into bankruptcy was nearly impossible. Maybe refusing to make a loan once or twice was capable of being done. However, when every other homebuyer is looking for a subprime mortgage, refusing on a consistent basis while the opportunity cost is all too real is what caused the madness. The tree of greed had every branch and leaf working simultaneously. All in all, the banks should have the finger pointed at them. They knew the power was in their hands whether or not they did anything right or wrong. Too big to fail meant freedom to be evil. They took advantage of everyone. Realtors and loan officers pushed the buyers to take on the loans. Interest only loans along with one year terms became common. Worst of all, the less capable the borrower was of paying back the loan, the less knowledge he had of what was actually happening (most of the time). This is doubly worse since that meant he had equal or more incentive to go through with the purchase. They typically wanted to grasp the opportunity of living above their usual quality of life. The incentive to "move on up" greatly exceed the ability of one's conscious to get down to earth. Nobody could have been realistic. Even if they did, they'd disregard it since everyone else was thinking short term. Luckily for Eisman, he thought realistically and ended up working smarter. Investors of his lucked out too since he kept them out of groupthink when they wanted out of the game. Additionally, he told them nothing of the tactics which he was using. He kept knowledge hidden for the sake of the wealth explosion at the end of the tunnel. The CDO managers played an equally giant role in this deceptive game of market manipulation. Their sole duty was to oversee the conditions of each tranche or bundle of bonds. Whenever a bad bond appeared, their job was to immediately switch it out for one which was appropriate for the rating in which it was given. Unfortunately, they allegedly did their job on rare occasion. Laziness coupled with lack of care went rampant in this industry. The basis for this field was getting money from taking it while giving nothing in return. I see no difference between this and gambling at a casino or on sports. Entitlement was too much of an issue during this time. Being a CDO manager meant an inflated ego and a nearly non-existent work ethic. Nothing could have possibly changed the results of their actions because no regulations were set in place. They had zero incentive to do their job well. No bad decision was not made during this time. Steve Eisman and Michael Burry are of the few good decision makers in the book. Homebuyers made some of the worst financing and investment decisions during that time. They knew not what they were doing. Regardless of whether or not they did, the top priority was still the vanity associated with residing in an abode above what they could afford. Considering consequences on all angles did not come to mind for the public. The imminent collapse happened out of the blue. One's who saw it coming and believed it still did not believe it most of the time. Harming the public was possibly the worst choice. During that time, the system was on the too lenient, too lax on loans end of the extreme. Regulations were loosened too much. Now, the government has made them a little too strict. Finding that balance is an ongoing process, but extremes are more than often set and met. Regulatory commissions need to be sanctioned more. The entire Wall Street needs overseers with responsible overseers of them. Not betting against the market meant harm to far too many. The universal principle of cycles and reaping what is sowed is all too evident in this book. The banks were the ones simmering with greed. However, when one bets against the bank, money can be made. I see the Steve and Michael as Robin Hood type of guys. The only difference is that they didn't give to the poor too much. Inversely, they robbed them indirectly by robbing the monarchs who robbed them. This type of endless cycle can go on and on for eternity if desired. The only other ingredient needed is destruction so that all can come full circle. The subprime mortgage crisis was a part of the rebuilding with destruction. Greed was encouraged and rewarded on every level. Consumers were encouraged to buy with insolvency, realtors and loan officers were incentivized to make money off of supporting them to go through with the untold of bankruptcy in the future, and banks were behind all of this when they created these types of mortgages. Investors in financial assets which backed these deals were encouraged to bet for or against them paying it back or not. They were on the sidelines making wagers with shares and tranches. The contracts in which the homebuyers entered into required little to no consideration on their part. Lower credit quality was the name of the game. Everything went on an upward spiral until the time came for consumers to pay their debts. The economy of the housing and financial markets were all good until defaults and bankruptcies. After those came flooding in, housing prices began to drop. Nobody wanted to buy homes after the downward spiral. Regulatory policies put up the front by having interest rates supremely low. Ultimately, the trickle-down effect was fully in play by everyone involved. No specific group is to blame in any direct way when all is taken into consideration. Subprime lending became an all time high around 2004-2006. This was right before the bubble burst. When the pieces of the puzzle are put into play, all makes sense. When demand for homes was at an all time high, that meant all the orchestrators of these transactions jumped in on the action full on. The reason for the corrupt business practices was because it's what they had to do. Being ethical was not a choice because if one person didn't want to make a drop onto an economic collapse, then ten other people would snatch that opportunity. They would take action immediately if you didn't. The competition involving real estate transaction would trump all hopes of the economy working out in the end. That is, if some miracle happened where every drop of evil in the world were eliminated and only paradise existed. To avoid what happened, considering the circumstances, money would have to have not existed. Or, possibly a gold standard could have stopped the tragedy. When accumulated wealth arises out of debt, it is not going to be a good time. Equity is of real value. Debt is of counter value. If one does not respect the actions taken in the ethical sense, they should at the least look at this from the side of fiat engineering. I see the manipulation on debt as a modern form of alchemy. I view the big players as nothing but neo-sorcerers. Credit default swaps were the runes which Eisman and Burry used to cast alchemy spells. Investors who went along with them were the spirits supporting the manifestations of money. They believed not in the duality of good and evil, but only what seems appropriate for achieving the desired outcome. I certainly do not discount the possibility of the winners of the book spending time doing rituals that aid in amassing wealth. Consumers purchased houses after a stagnant market in real estate. We see that too often where stagnation ends and madness begins. The scenario of market collapse was not at all unusual when looking at the ways of the warlocks. Conceptually, a lack of equity cannot possibly produce more equity. In theory, a debt instrument going into more debt should not be capable of producing more income. However, with credit default swaps and a bailout, the physics of finance become defied. The crash of 2008 showed us the ingenuity of banks, lenders, and investors. Nothing is impossible when one looks at the events which followed suit after the creation of subprime lending. We see that finance is the opposite of ethics and that being in the field is solely about playing the game. Nothing other than the game matters. Principles of business and real estate are what is important. The Big Short is the most accurate description of lower-credit quality loans being good. It is the best way to look at the good in evil. Most of all, one can take out of it the biggest misconception of all in real estate. This book fully proves that location is not always the biggest factor when determining the price for houses. In the grandest sense, the market for everything is what comes in to play the most. Housing prices could not have possibly gone down when the demand was artificially boosted so high. Synthetic CDOs kept the superficial figures and statistics going. AIG and Bear Stearns held up the facade as much as they possibly could. An end needs to happen somewhere, somehow when one is altering reality.