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"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Books: Current Affairs
The wise man reads both books and life itself. - Lin Yutang
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
by Michael Lewis (2010)
Lewis examines the roots of the sub-prime mortgage bond packaging which led to the demise of several Wall Street Investment Banks and the recent recession. He is is a good writer as he proved in his first book about Wall Street, Liars Poker.
Lewis does a good job explaining the details of Derivatives, Credit Swaps, Collateralized Debt Obligations (“CDOs”) and other poisonous, artificial “securities.” Lewis demonstrates that these vehicles were little more than Las Vegas inspired gambles. He portrays the few Wall Street and West Coast ‘outsiders’ who predicted the failure of the subprime mortgage bonds and the investment houses who would fail because of their investments in them. A very good read.
A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers
by Lawrence G. McDonald (2009)
McDonald tells his own story of breaking into the securities industry in Massachusetts and achieving his life’s dream becoming a bond trader at one of Wall Street’s legendary investment houses.
McDonald and his colleagues in the distressed assets department watched with growing alarm as Lehman’s Mortgage Bond Department put together deal after deal involving subprime mortgages, “Alt A Loans” and “Liar Loans”. Lehman mortgage bond packagers found the way to con the rating agencies to rate packages of junk loans as top-rated bonds. McDonald is a bit full of himself and some of his story seems too complimentary of his close circle of colleagues at Lehman.
At one point he loses much of his credibility when he says the mortgage salesmen in California, Arizona and Florida were the cause of Lehman’s failure. Certainly, the mortgage brokers were writing loans for people who had no means to pay them off after the rates were adjusted. However, Lehman and the other big institutions provided the money the brokers used to make the lousy loans. Lehman failed because its senior management was blinded by the enormous profits generated by the mortgage bond people and management’s refusal to look behind the operation to detect the enormous risks which were being undertaken.
Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health
by David Michaels (2008)
Lawyering is not just reading cases, briefs, contracts and other documents. My practice invites, if not compels, me to remain abreast of wider social, political and regulatory policies which impact not only the public, but the specific rights and rules implicated in a lawsuit for personal injury or death arising from defective products, whether it be defective autos and tires or dangerously defective drugs and workplaces.
Hence, the recent book, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, by David Michaels, is important and should be widely read and discussed. Consider the Table of Contents from the book, which shows the range and depth of the social and political problems caused by the self-interested manufacture of wrongful doubt.
See My Blog Category: Junk Science v. Junk Doubt
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint.... What I began by reading, I must finish by acting. - Henry David Thoreau
