Don't read
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis, if you're trying to keep your blood pressure down, because what this book makes clear about the economic meltdown of 2007-2008 is that it was triggered by Wall Street insiders -- bankers, bond traders, stockbrokers, hedge-fund managers -- who either didn't know what they were doing, or knew but didn't care. In creating, selling, and buying credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and other increasingly baroque financial instruments built on a foundation of shoddy subprime mortgages, Lewis writes, they were "either crooks or morons." They made billions before losing trillions of dollars of other people's money, and it would be nothing more than depressing and enraging if Lewis weren't such a great reporter and storyteller, going behind the scenes of the financial crisis from the point of view of a handful of people who bet against this insane bubble.
