The World's Best Book Summaries
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.
Want to keep active while you’re pregnant? That’s great. But you should know some pros and cons of exercising while you’re pregnant. Learn the good exercises and bad exercises of exercising while pregnant.
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.
We all know that women go into labor to deliver children. But what does it actually feel like, and what happens? Here, author Emily Oster explains what it’s like to go into labor.
A minority of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and there’s largely nothing you can do about it. About 90% of miscarriages in the first trimester are due to chromosomal problems at conception. It’s not your fault. What is your chance of miscarriage at 7 weeks? 8 weeks? 12 weeks?
By 2050, 14 million people will have Alzheimer’s, which is a leading cause of death in the U.S. Alzheimer’s, a form of dementia, develops when the protein beta-amyloid forms plaque in the brain. Is there an “Alzheimer’s diet” that could keep you from being one of those 14 million people? Although there’s no definitive cause of Alzheimer’s, researchers agree that lifestyle factors such as diet play a role. Learn how adopting an Alzheimer’s prevention diet can help protect your brain and get suggestions on how you can smoothly incorporate more plant foods into your diet.
Part of a leader’s responsibility is to lead her team courageously and decisively, no matter what stress and confusion is happening around her; presumably, this is part of the reason she has earned her position as the head of the team. Sometimes, a leader will only have limited information available to make a critical decision, and in these cases she must be comfortable making the best decision possible with what she has. At times an educated guess will be the best option available, and this is when a leader’s knowledge and experience is especially critical to compensate for missing information.
Who is Ben Hockett? How was he involved in the “big short” that profited from the 2008 financial crisis? Ben Hockett is a former Deutsche Bank trader who left Wall Street behind to trade derivatives from his home in Berkeley Hills. In 2006 he worked with investment company Cornwall Capital to short the housing market and profit from the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis. In the movie The Big Short, Brad Pitt’s character Ben Rickert is based on Ben Hockett. We’ll cover Ben Hockett’s background, his major role in getting Cornwall Capital the recognition it needed to be a player on
What is specialty finance? What does it offer, and how is it risky? Did specialty finance loans contribute to the 2008 financial crisis? Specialty finance is the euphemistic name of financial industries that provide financial products and services to the least-creditworthy Americans, people who wouldn’t be able to get a loan from a traditional bank. Learn how the industry of specialty finance became lucrative and how its preying on uncreditworthy Americans contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.