The Big Short

The Big Short - Inside The Doomsday Machine

I haven't read this book nor have I seen the movie. It is mentioned in a story* I am reading, I started following links and I found some interesting stuff. I've read other things about the financial crisis of 2008, but it didn't speak to me the way these lines do:

The Big Short describes several of the key players in the creation of the credit default swap market that sought to bet against the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) bubble and thus ended up profiting from the financial crisis of 2007–10. - Wikipedia's article about the book.

The two discover that the impending market collapse is being further perpetuated by the sale of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), groups of poor loans that are packaged together and incorrectly given AAA ratings due to the conflicts of interest and dishonesty of the rating agencies. - Wikipedia's article about the film.

Why has it taken so long for a clear explanation to reach me? Perhaps because earlier stories were too full of complicated economic analysis, too full of hype from people promoting their own particular view of what happened, and the normal legal fears of calling people criminals before they have been convicted.

* Newsonomics by Ken Doctor, sent to me by Indiana Thomas

Update five days later: another post on this subject.