In this compelling look at 2008’s world financial meltdown, The Blind Side author focuses on a few money managers who won big when Wall Street bet wrong. Along with a tale of oddballs battling the system, you get an easy-to-swallow education. “The subprime mortgage market had a special talent for obscuring,” Lewis writes. “Alt-A was just what they called crappy mortgage loans for which they hadn’t even bothered to acquire the proper documents—to verify the borrower’s income, say. ‘A’ was the designation attached to the most creditworthy borrowers; Alt-A, which stood for ‘Alternative A-paper,’ meant an alternative to the most creditworthy, which of course sounds a lot more fishy once it is put that way.” With Wall Street woes still in today’s headlines, this book is required reading.
This article appears in May 13-19, 2010.
