TOW #21: IRB Post

The financial crisis of 2008 left many people distraught and even more confused, which is why Michael Lewis wrote The Big Short.

http://politic365.com/2011/04/20/why-so-quiet-on-threat-to-our-national-credit-rating/

When I began reading The Big Short by Michael Lewis, I was a bit uncertain what exactly I was getting into. I thought I would be reading a book purely about finances and economics. That isn't exactly the case. The Big Short is laid out in chapters, but it's sectioned off by different people. Every 15 or so pages, a new character is explained and introduced. This layout creates a very "layered" form of reading; first, I learned about Steven Eisman in detail, particularly about his involvement in subprime mortgage and later the "defaulting" of loans and the scam of a company called Household Finance Corporation. In the next section, not necessarily chapter, however, Lewis discusses Michael Burry, a highly-driven medical student who successfully drove his way into Wall Street. So far, both Eisman and Burry have something enormous in common: both men began in another career and found themselves dealing and trading on Wall Street. Eisman was a lawyer while Burry was a neurologist. Both abandoned their respectable careers to pursue their interest in the stock market. The appeal is obvious, and well-put by Burry himself: "[A stock] could only fall to zero, but it could rise to infinity." The purpose of The Big Short is to explain the financial crisis of 2008. So far, Lewis has used several rhetorical devices and strategies to achieve his purpose, including analogies and anecdotes. When trying to explain the tranches or a mortgage loan and repayment, Lewis compares each tranche to a new floor of a building. The lowest floor will be "flooded" first (meaning the person with this tranche will be the first to have to pay back their debt, then the second lowest, and so on. This analogy, along with the many others Lewis uses, serve to explain difficult-to-understand economic terms to the average reader. Without this explanation, readers would be lost and unable to follow Lewis's logic. By including specific, entertaining anecdotes, the author makes The Big Short feel less like an informational book but rather like an entertaining novel. This gives The Big Short added drama and sparks the readers interest. As of this point in The Big Short, Michael Lewis has effectively prepared himself to accomplish his purpose.