The End began in the Eighties

Vivid and insightful account of the housing finance Boom from Michael Lewis.Read it all, he has a fine sense of the absurd. Here he is on Credit Default Swaps:

The arrangement bore the same relation to actual finance as fantasy football bears to the N.F.L. Eisman was perplexed in particular about why Wall Street firms would be coming to him and asking him to sell short. “What Lippman did, to his credit, was he came around several times to me and said, ‘Short this market,’ ” Eisman says. “In my entire life, I never saw a sell-side guy come in and say, ‘Short my market.’ ”