Michael Lewis 'Inside The Doomsday Machine'

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Critical Analysis: The Big Short Throughout the novel The Big Short by Michael Lewis, there are several significant events that take place that represent the meaning behind its title. The subtitle of the novel is “Inside the Doomsday Machine,” which signifies the mortgage-backed security that Lewis discusses. In my opinion, the economic mechanisms discussed seem to be so unclear that most Americans may not know the detailed meaning of them. The author talks about Steve Eisman, a junior analyst at Oppenheimer who studies mortgage companies. The position itself is important in that the regulators didn’t want to be held responsible for any fraudulent acts. With that being said, Lewis does an outstanding job at explaining why the entire economy reached its breaking point. During the year 2008, there are many important occurrences that lead to the economic depression, creating a drastic impact on several American lives. In the early stages, he begins to discuss credit default swaps (CDS), and how they were rapidly taken advantage of by investors in the stock market. For example, Lewis states, "The credit default swap would solve the single biggest problem with Mike…show more content…
There were several reasons why this was not feasible, the main reason being that the company made investors sign an agreement saying that he/she cannot access his/her money for a certain amount of time after your investment. Although the prospects of profitability caused several investors to invest, as they believed such investments would be profitable, this was not always the case especially during the year of 2008. Further, Americans did not know what some of these players were up to, as they were told that their investments were to be

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