Review of "The Big Short"

As part of a reading group that I'm in, we discussed "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. Lewis is always enjoyable to read, though, as with many such efforts, I'm always left wondering whether the story is too "neat" and "coherent." Maybe this is just my historian's bias to believe that reality is always a lot messier than a journalist, businessman, or political scientist might make it out to be.

The narrative force of the book sometimes resulted in me rooting for the coming economic meltdown just so that all of those bad guys would get what's coming to them. That ain't good. But it's also not what happened. The guys (and they're all guys) at the top on both sides of these big bets still came out fine. So for me the bigger conclusion is that having big business and big government working closely together and being staffed by the same ivy league crowd isn't good for the our country no matter who's in charge. I guess I find myself siding with those on the left and the right who want to see the big banks broken up, which doesn't seem to be what's going to happen with the current financial reform package. The "establishment" wins again!