The Big Short describes several of the main players in the creation of the credit default swap market who sought to bet against the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) bubble and thus ended up profiting from the financial crisis of 2007–08. It also highlights the eccentric natures of people who bet against the market or otherwise "go against the grain."
The book follows people who believed the housing bubble was going to burst—including Meredith Whitney, who predicted the demise of Citigroup and Bear Stearns; Steve Eisman, an outspoken hedge fund manager; Greg Lippmann, a Deutsche Bank trader; Eugene Xu, a quantitative analyst who created the first CDO market by matching buyers and sellers; the founders of Cornwall Capital, who started a hedge fund in their garage with $110,000 and built it into $120 million when the market crashed; and Michael Burry, an ex-neurologist who created Scion Capital.[1]
It also highlights some of the people involved in the biggest losses in the market crash: Wing Chau, Merrill's $300 million mezzanine CDO manager; Howie Hubler, known as the person who lost $9 billion in one trade, the fifth-largest single loss in history;[2] and Joseph Cassano's AIG Financial Products, which suffered more than $99 billion in losses.[3]
