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The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,
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SheReaders Book Club
Dear Young Person, read anything and everything that pulls your interest. Never stop to ask permission.
John Burgess
The Big Short does get bogged down in repetitive detail about CDO's and CD's and bond trading. I would recommend for younger readers, "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense" by Lawrence G. McDonald and Patrick Robinson. This is an insiders view of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It covers similar ground to The Big Short but tells the story from the POV of a young man rising up the ladder to getting a job at Lehman's just as the storm clouds were beginning to gather.
Bob H
Not if you're intelligent, and someone interested in this book probably is. Given that this book is about a series of mind-bending and ridiculous financial schemes, it could have been a dry economics talk, and the author instead has made it a personality-driven story. It's how a bunch of adults, who should have known better, wrecked the economy you'll be growing up in. This story put me in mind of Disney's version of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (in "Fantasia"), a doubling and re-doubling disaster that these geniuses started, contributed to, and couldn't stop.
Darius
I would not recommend this book for anyone who does not already have some grasp of how financial markets work.
Cussing etc... no big deal.
This is essentially an ideological diatribe against traders, and without context of markets, it is pulp fiction. With context of markets, it is slightly informative, but a pain to get through.
Cussing etc... no big deal.
This is essentially an ideological diatribe against traders, and without context of markets, it is pulp fiction. With context of markets, it is slightly informative, but a pain to get through.
Virginie
I agree that there is a lot of swearing and some of the characters in the book are not necessarily role models. However, it is a detailed and accurate description of the RMBS crisis. My 12-years-old boy is currently reading it. He cannot understand it all but he is learning about finance in an entertaining way.
Abdullah
You're going places
Sivaram Velauthapillai
The content is ok for a 12yr old but there is a lot of swearing in the book. I would not recommend it.
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