Speaker 1: Pushkin way back in the spring of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: after many years of ignoring Wall Street, I started paying
Speaker 1: attention to it again. After all, these big banks began
Speaker 1: to announce these massive trading losses. These people, Morgan Stanley
Speaker 1: and Lehman Brothers, and Baris Stearns and Merrill Lynch, who
Speaker 1: were meant to be the smartest in the world at
Speaker 1: managing financial risk, suddenly looked like complete idiots. And then
Speaker 1: one day the losses grew so large that the banks
Speaker 1: began to fail and bring the entire financial system down
Speaker 1: with them. My name is Michael Lewis. I wrote a
Speaker 1: book about this time. I told the story through the
Speaker 1: eyes of the relative handful of people who made fortunes
Speaker 1: from the crisis. They took the other side of the
Speaker 1: bets made by the big Wall Street banks, and those
Speaker 1: bets paid off when the market collapsed. I called the
Speaker 1: book The Big Short. It came out in twenty ten,
Speaker 1: which is now fifteen years ago. Five years later it
Speaker 1: became an Oscar winning movie. And now I've narrated the
Speaker 1: audiobook of The Big Short for the first time. Steve
Speaker 1: is using his fingers to speak on his behalf zero.
Speaker 1: They said yes, asked the obviously irritated CEO. Is that
Speaker 1: another question? No, said Eisman, It's a zero. Why am
Speaker 1: I bringing this story back now? Well, for one, the
Speaker 1: financial crisis of two thousand and eight has entirely reshaped
Speaker 1: the world we live in, and I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot more we can learn from this event. So that's
Speaker 1: what we're going to do over the next seven weeks.
Speaker 1: Here and Against the Rules, a companion podcast series for
Speaker 1: The Big Short, I speak with many of the characters
Speaker 1: that I followed back when I was writing the book,
Speaker 1: the hedge fund manager Steve Eisman. But after the meeting,
Speaker 1: like you know, guys, thought said, what do you think?
Speaker 1: I said, what do I think? Somebody just told me
Speaker 1: how to make a gazillion dollars. I'm ready to go.
Speaker 1: I also spent some time with Eisman's posse at Front
Speaker 1: Point Partners Vinnie, Danny, and Porter. And what do you
Speaker 1: say to him when he says, Vinnie, what the hell's
Speaker 1: going on? There's a problem with the housing market? Which
Speaker 1: you don't want to say. Is I've been trying to
Speaker 1: tell you this, but I was scared. You know, humans
Speaker 1: are humans, will make the same mistakes all over again.
Speaker 1: All the consequences of all those things that happened seventeen
Speaker 1: years ago are not only still with us, potentially end
Speaker 1: up getting a lot worse. We're also going to unpack
Speaker 1: a bit the way the financial crisis broke politics in America.
Speaker 1: Draw me a line between the financial crisis and Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: Was his rise directly a result of the anger that
Speaker 1: was generated by the financial crisis? One million percent? Do
Speaker 1: you worry about the Fed's independence? Of course, that absolutely
Speaker 1: can be destroyed. But I think also this is the
Speaker 1: story of how a story gets told. If you aim
Speaker 1: for art and you miss, you end up with comedy.
Speaker 1: If you aim for comedy and you miss, you end
Speaker 1: up with crap. I hope you'll join me for this
Speaker 1: special behind the scenes series on the making and the
Speaker 1: meaning of The Big Short. You can get your copy
Speaker 1: of The Big Short audiobook, newly narrated by me over
Speaker 1: at Pushkin dot FM or wherever audiobooks are sold. Then
Speaker 1: come back here to Against the Rules. Episodes of The
Speaker 1: Big Short Companion podcast drop weekly starting October the fourteenth.
Speaker 1: See you then,