19 Dec Tracing the Roots: Liar’s Poker

After deciding that I was tired of being a financial ignoramus, I spent some time looking for books and articles that would explain the vocabulary and the rudiments of the world of finance. The global economy had essentially imploded in 2008 and I didn’t understand why. Once I finished a couple of books, such as John Lanchester’s I.O.U., which laid out difficult concepts in simple terms to explain the financial crash, and Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President, which detailed much of the politics behind national economic strategy since 2008, I felt as though I finally had at least a grip of the overarching story behind the crisis. But it wasn’t until I picked up Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker that I really understood how far back the roots of the crisis stretched.