Good stuff on the financial crisis

After watching Inside Job and listening (on tape) to The Big Short, I highly recommend both as good fodder for igniting your confused interest in the financial world.

The Big Short is about 8 hours to listen to and it kept my attention all rapt up during much of my trip. Like most any great documentary, the official topic of the book is not much more that a pretext for a running subtext of insight into psychology. Throughout, the authors tantalizingly characterize the investor heros as quirky and more hardworking than brilliant, as if I could follow in their footsteps if I really wanted to. Most poignantly, a market man comes to terms with his Aspergers after watching his son get diagnosed. And here is one of my favorite character descriptions:

He was short, with a wall street belly; not the bleacher-bums boiler, but the discrete necessary pouch of a squirrel just before winter.