The World's Best Book Summaries
You may have heard of credit default swaps, but the underlying concept can be hard to understand. What’s a good credit-default-swap example? A credit default swap is an insurance policy on a bond. We’ll cover two credit-default-swap examples that show how these policies work and the role they played in the 2008 financial crisis.
What does it mean to “short” the housing market? How did investors who shorted the housing market in the early 2000s benefit from the events leading up to the 2008 financial crisis? Shorting the housing market is a way of placing a bet against the market. If homes fall in value and the housing market declines, people who have shorted the housing market benefit. Learn how shorting the housing market works and how investors who did it predicted (and benefited from) the 2008 financial crisis.
Who are Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai? And how did they turn $110,000 into $80 million? Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai are the founders of Cornwall Capital, a New York City investment corporation. They shorted the housing market before the 2008 financial crisis and were featured in the book and movie The Big Short. We’ll cover how Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai got their start in investing and how they went from second-class citizens in the financial world to major Wall Street players.
What is a subprime mortgage? How did subprime lending contribute to the 2008 financial crisis? A subprime mortgage is a home loan given to someone with a low credit score, indicating there’s a higher risk the borrower might default on the loan. Learn why subprime mortgages are risky and how subprime loans contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.
Where is Buck’s Peak? What was Educated author Tara Westover’s life there like? Buck’s Peak is a remote mountain in Franklin County, Idaho and childhood home of author Tara Westover. Growing up in Buck’s Peak, Westover experienced more than just ideological extremism. Her parents’ beliefs had real-world consequences for the children, which frequently put Tara and her siblings in grave danger. Whether it was through near-death experiences in car crashes or maimings in the junkyard where her father Gene forced his children to work, it was a constant struggle for survival on Buck’s Peak.
Who are the Zulu and Xhosa? What is the history of the tension between the two communities? When comedian Trevor Noah was growing up in South Africa, the Zulu and Xhosa rivalry was strong and potentially deadly. We’ll briefly cover the history of the Zulu-Xhosa feud and look at how it affected Noah’s childhood.
“Big Food” is an influential industry–their positions as key economic players in the U.S. gives them influence in the government. But how closely tied are food and politics? And how does it affect American citizens? We’ll look at extended examples of ways the food industry influences policy, and we’ll cover how this affects you.
Who is The Big Short‘s Dr. Michale Burry? How did he predict the 2008 financial crisis, and what did he get out of it? Dr. Michael Burry of The Big Short fame is a medical doctor by training and an investor and hedge fund manager who predicted and profited from the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. We’ll cover Dr. Michael Burry’s background, the background of the financial crisis, and how Dr. Burry shorted the housing market.
What events led up to the 2008 bank bailout? Did Wall Street deserve to be bailed out? What was the true bank-bailout cost? Who paid it? We’ll cover the events leading up to the 2008 bank bailout (also known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act) and how it hurt the American taxpayer.
Maybe you’ve heard of mortgage-backed securities in relation to the 2008 financial crisis. But what are mortgage-backed securities? How do they differ from other investments? A mortgage-backed security (MBS) is essentially a bond, or debt instrument, that’s comprised of a bundle of home mortgages (often running into the thousands) that have been packaged together into a tradable asset. Learn the history of mortgage-backed securities and how they infiltrated Wall Street, becoming one of the main contributors to the 2008 financial crisis.