If you don't get any of the above, get the book, it will be one of the best "investments" you make all year.
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Some of my thoughts:
I disagreed with his property investing strategy. He paid all cash when, I think, the genius of property investing in the developed world lies in leverage, using other people's money - but that's another blog on its own.

When he covered bonds, JD Spooner didn't cover index-linked bonds, linkers. He simply said that it is equities that keep up with the cost of living, however, Linkers also keep up with inflation. Perhaps this was taking a step too far into high finance.

In the section on staying in touch with his past, JD Spooner talked about a friend of his from high school that was a plumber in a town that he moved to. He called the guy to help him out with his plumbing. I wondered, how does he feel when he's in touch with people from his past that haven't achieved nearly as much as he has: he's a multimillionaire investment advisor and author of several bestsellers. In this book, "papa" talks about owning several million dollars of Citigroup stock before it tanked and that would only be one stock in an extensive portfolio, I expect. His friends must revere him, how does he relay to them that he's still the same old guy? This is the only query that remained outstanding by the time I finished the book.

​​THE CAUSE OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

Michael Lewis goes through how the creation of financial instruments composed of money lent to people who could never afford to pay the credit back eventually led to the crisis: subprime mortgage bonds and collateralized mortgage obligations, CMOs.

Mortgages were made irresistible with low ‘teaser’ rates, no need for a down-payment and, as though that wasn’t enough, no requirement for proof of income.

Credit rating agencies on their behalf overrated the securities. They didn’t have access to the underlying mortgage data and were ‘too scared’ that ‘excessive’ demands for more information would lead banks to go to another rating agency taking away their fees. The rating agency models, too, were riddled with nonsensical assumptions. ​

Frontpoint Capital: Steve Eisman, Vincent (Vinny) Daniel and Danny Moses
In many ways these were my favorite characters in the book. They, after much persuading and analysis agreed with Lippmann’s view that subprime asset back securities were overrated and overpriced so they put their money where their mouths were and bet on their demise.

I found Eisman especially amusing because he said the most random things. Whenever he encountered anyone who he thought was stupid he shorted whatever they were invested in. He shorted Wing Chau (who is now suing Michael Lewis for character defamation) and a host of top Wall Street entities: Moody’s, B of A, Citi and Merrills to name a few. His reason for shorting Merrills was that whenever something goes bad Merrill is always there.

Cornwall Capital: Jamie Mai and Charlie Ledley
These guys started a hedge fund, Cornwall Capital, with only USD110,000. They came to the realization of subprime products quite late. However, they did something different: whilst the first movers bet on the very worst BBB subprime mortgages, they bet on the better-rated AA layer because by that point it was clear that even that layer would fail. The bet paid off by tens of millions.

This is a 5* book. 

It’s very difficult to write a non-fiction, financial saga and actually make it interesting and readable but Michael Lewis has managed to do just that in The Big Short.

The book tries to grapple with why the financial crisis of 2007-2009 happened, who saw the crisis coming and what might happen now.