The Greatest Trade Ever and the Psychology of Patience

Gregory Zuckerman's The Greatest Trade Ever is a very different book than the vast majority of the [numerous] books on the economic crisis of 2008 that I have read thus far.  Several of the books in my series have aspired to be non-ideological, but none (until now) have actually pulled it off.  The Greatest Trade Ever does not seek to cast blame fpor the crisis on homeowners, or the government, or Wall Street - it simply tells the story of the the man who made more money on the crisis than anyone else in the world (hedge fund operator John Paulson) and a few other folks along the way (who didn't do too poorly themselves).The book is 287 pages long, but I read it in one day.  It is a compelling narrative, and somehow he made the story of synthetic collateralized debt obligations and corresponding credit default swap derivatives sound interesting.  I do this stuff for a living so one would expect me to find it interesting (plus, no one ever accused me of being the coolest kid in class).  But I think laymen would find the book of interest as well.  It is always fun to read how someone could make billions of dollars, but it is even more interesting to read of how someone could make billions of dollars off of the very event losing the financial industry trillions of dollars.The big themes of the crisis that this book directly and indirectly hit home are as follows: (1) It is staggering to consider the hubris and arrogance and idiocy of the financial establishment that did not see the housing collapse coming.  I do not feel a need to say "I told you so" to my friends and family that did not believe me that gardeners making 35k per year could not afford 700k houses.  But multi-million dollar bankers - well, that is a different story.  (2) The story of Paulson is not about the profits he reaped in 2007 and 2008; it is a story about his patience and conviction in 2005 and 2006.  Sticking with a thesis when the whole world - literally, the entire world - thinks you are insane takes extraordinary resolve.  That resolve is what paid him billions of dollars.People may or may not render moral judgements about someone making so much money off of the housing collapse.  It is an absurd thought - the idea that someone predicting that borrowers and lenders were on a kamikaze mission, and investing his money accordingly - actually caused them to go  on their kamikaze mission.  As I screamed at the TV when that incompetent terd, Carl Levin, was shaking his fist at Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein a few weeks ago: Betting against that housing bubble was not unpatriotic; it was brilliant.  I like brilliance.  And I really like reading about it.This book project is in high gear now.  13 Bankers by Simon Johnson and Bailout Nation by Barry Ritholtz will be done by the end of the week.  The Quants by Scott Patterson and The Death of Capital by Michael Lewitt will be just behind those.  Stay tuned.  As current events are establishing on a daily basis, the way in which we understand the crisis of 2008 is going to be one of the single most important things in our lifetimes, and could not possibly have a bigger role in what our futures will look like.