The Big Short By Michael Lewis

This story, ‘’The Money’’, was written by Junot Diaz. In this story, Diaz mainly talks about money. His mother is sending money to Diaz’s grandparents whom are alone in Santo Domingo. Even though Diaz’s mother is in bad situations, she collects and sends money to grandparents every six months. In the summer, when he was 12years old, his family was on vacation. After they took the vacation, they encountered a ridiculous situation. They were surprised due to the fact that the front door was unlocked and the thieves swept the house clean. Furthermore, thieves made off with mother’s money. Although they were surprised the happening of the robbery, it was not big point to them since it was common incident in their town. After few days, Diaz met

Junot Diaz is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is very widely known for this writing and his background story. In Junot Diaz’s story, “The Money: Starting Out,” he shares a story from his childhood. The story is about when Diaz and his family had just recently moved to New Jersey from Santo Domingo and they felt as if they were “targeted.” The neighborhood that they were living in was not the top of the line, lots of robberies were taking place. The Diazs’ themselves are a victim of robbery, but in the end, everything turns out to be good. Throughout Diaz’s story the reader can better understand and sympathize with this family because of the many uses of pathos and ethos in the passage.

The documentary “Merchants of Doubt” directed by Robert Keener describes the unethical practices of manipulating scientific data to market unsafe products. It explains the use of public relations and media to divert the health risk involved in smoking in order to protect the industry. The documentary exposes how companies hire a third party, presented as credible scientific expert, to mislead people about the company’s unsafe products. Those people selling lies to cover for the company’s wrongdoing are called “merchants of doubt”. They create a sense of doubt in the veracity of the scientific data and results collected by the scientist. This strategy of creating doubt and confusion causes delay in government regulation. The documentary shows

The American Dream is a sought after idea sold to Americans and immigrants alike. It promises the opportunity to create a better future for oneself. So long as said individual works hard it promises a happy ending. Arthur Miller reveals the reality of the American Dream in his play Death of a Salesman through the life of Willy Loman and his family. Willy represents the primary target audience as a working class man providing for his family. His pride causes him to be two steps behind in his life-long quest to achieve the American Dream and his family inherit his failures in their own individual quests.

Throughout Moneyball, by Michael Lewis, we see how the main character, Billy Beane, implements the practice of statistics into the trading desk of baseball. As the plot develops we see how he faces struggles and issues that a stock broker might face as well. Lewis, having a background in writing financial pieces, sees the correlation between the stats baseball players put up in games, the stats companies put up in the stock market, and how traders of both stocks and players use similar tactics to benefit their respective companies or team.

Mortgage fraud is one of the costliest, yet seldom prosecuted crimes in the criminal world. CoreLogic estimates approximately $13 billion in fraud losses occurred in 2012, according to the latest available data in the 2012 Mortgage Fraud Trends Report (Gerding, 2013). While these numbers may seem high, the approximate $13 billion in losses is only a fraction of what it would be if every case were to be prosecuted. Mortgage fraud was also a major contributing factor towards a national, and nearly global economic collapse in 2008 when the United States economy saw the worst recession it has seen since the great depression. Anyone that has seen the films “99 homes” starring Andrew Garfield and Michael Shannon or “The Big Short” starring Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling has seen a largely realistic glimpse of mortgage fraud and how devastating it can be.

“The American Sniper” by Chris Kyle is an account of the deadliest American sniper ever. He was called “the devil” by the enemies he hunted and “the legend” by his Navy SEAL brothers. From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. The Pentagon has officially confirmed more than 150 of Kyle 's kills (the previous American record was 109). Iraqi insurgents feared Kyle so much they named him Al-Shaitan meaning “the devil” and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle earned

Barbarians at The Gate is a prominent book within the financial industry and a great book to read for a deeper look inside how the private equity world works. The book is an account of one most famous leveraged buyout cases in the history of private equity. The story is about the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, Inc. by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., more commonly known as KKR, a tycoon in the private equity business in 1988. The book is written by two journalists of the wall street journal, Bryan Burrough and John Helyar and the chain of articles they wrote about during the entire longevity of the buyout process, through interviews with the key players in the deal. For anyone who is interested in the complex yet simple world of leveraged buyouts, the book is a must read to understand the nature of the deals and how anything goes and the characters and the psychology of people.

The Blind side is considered one of the best sports biographies and one of the best sports related inspirational stories. The blind side was published in 2006 and was written by Michael Lewis. This book is based on a Memphis native, Micahel Oher’s. The Blind Side contains two stories within its plot. One story begins with Michael Oher. The book explains the trials and tribulations of the young African American teenager. Micheal was from one of the worst neighborhoods in Memphis. He lived with anyone would would give him a place to stay for them night, The story follow his journey from being poor and then meeting the Tuohy family, who is a wealthy Memphis family who took him in and helped make his dream come true of playing the the National Football League. The book then goes into detail about the evolution of Micheal trying to play in the game of football. Lewis describes in the book how the left tackle position is one of the best positions on a football team, because the person maintain gin this role is responsible for protecting the quarterback 's “blind side” (“Blind”).

Not all aspects of economic growth are positive, for example when an economy is at, or near its full capacity of productivity prices can be driven up causing inflation and the devaluing of their currency, where each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services that it previously could have. It can increase the

Selfishness is defined as the stinginess resulting from a concern of your own welfare and the disregard of others. Selfishness, once passing a certain level, is seen as a character flaw by many people. Where does selfishness come from? Is it a trait in which as humans we pick up over time, or is it an animalistic trait in which we are born with and have no control over? Author Mark Sundeen tells us the story of Daniel Suelo, in the book The Man Who Quit Money. Daniel Suelo was a mid-aged man, who decided to drop everything and live on his own without the use of money; he would no longer live the typical American lifestyle and survive strictly on the kindness of others and the leftovers he could find in dumpsters.

Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex, he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in

Money, sex, drugs, and greed-these four words are characterized and displayed profoundly throughout the movie Wolf of Wall Street. Based on a true story about the life of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), the movie is narrated and gives insight to the struggle, power, and addictions that surrounded Belfort’s life. Belfort was a stockbroker who learned his way as an entry-level worker on Wall Street before creating his own company Stratton Oakmont. Belfort quickly learned that success on Wall Street was a result of doing any means necessary, regardless if it was the truth or providing a false sense of hope. His main scam involved selling cheap stocks and inflating the prices so the brokers can sell at a high price. Although this was illegal, Belfort was so involved and addicted to money and drugs that his scamming ways were irrelevant.

Inspired by How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn't ?a previously published book by the Schiffs? father Irwin, a widely published economist and activist? How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes incorporates the spirit of the original while tackling the latest economic issues.With wit and humor, the Schiffs explain the roots of

One of the topics I found most interesting in this book was the differences between the stock market and the bond market that Michael Lewis to some extent explains in the beginning of chapter three. While the stock market was intensely regulated and mostly transparent, the bond market consisted of primarily large institutions and escaped serious regulation. This lack of legislative control played a great part in allowing the credit default swaps on subprime mortgage bonds, CDO’s, and the eventual collapse of the subprime market. Following the subprime mortgage crisis, the Department of the Treasury released a new regulatory plan, The Department of the Treasury Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory