Boomerang By Michael Lewis

[Guest hitoallusa]

The book is mainly consisted of magazine articles so if you don't want to buy the book then you can read most of it online. His take on Credit Default Swaps was interesting and I am not sure whether he delivers a complete picture of what happened in 2008. The book's main point is that the crisis is not over and the sovereign debt will likely bring many countries down. Even the US.

It could happen but I think if there is another crisis then it will come in a different form. The funny thing in the book is his hero making of hedge fund managers who made a lot money of during the crisis. They are speculators and they used a form of insurance to gamble without owning any of underlying assets. Michael justifies their actions by stating that they warned the market repeatedly and nobody listened. Yes they did but in a sense that was because they had to collect money from their bet and they needed some institutions to be strong enough to paid them in the end. It's not their interest to let all the banks to fail. In my opinion some banks caught fairly well their warnings and hedged themselves well too. Most of all the government bailout was inevitable and they expected that. That's why some big institutions not only collected premiums and but made profits from their CDS transaction in the end. So I don't buy Michael's hero making of these people. They contributed to the crisis too. In my opinion a lot.

The book itself is very interesting and Michael makes a hard topic very amusing and easy to follow. The downside of that is that he is doing over-simplification which leads to a misunderstanding among ill-informed readers. So I think it is a book you can read before you go to bed but you can't use it as a reference if you are doing serious investments on your own.

[eeyore]

Looks like an interesting read. Thanks.