A document I occasionally come back to: the presentation from Deutsche Bank on shorting subprime mortgages back in 2007. (If you watched the Big Short, this is the actual IRL bit corresponding to the Jenga scene. static1.squarespace.com/static/56e34fd… )
One of the reasons I come back to it is that this is, fundamentally, a sales document, and it's just *so good* as a sales pitch. We happen to know, given the benefit of hindsight, that it was totally right, but buyers didn't, and this pitch works its hindquarters off proving self
Another reason is the sheer depth and rigor. There are some handwavy bits, but it looks like the work product of several dedicated professionals who had immersed themselves in a subject for years... because it is.
When you read this pitch and compare it to regulators' descriptions of what happened in the housing market, newspapers' glosses, or People Who Sound Like They Have An Informed Opinion, there is a *monumental chasm* as to the depth of analysis, the number of angles, the *details.*
And we're only seeing this work product because it happened close to ground zero of a social catastrophe and therefore ended up as part of the evidentiary record.
There are millions of documents like this out there, produced by a few and read by tens.
There are millions of documents like this out there, produced by a few and read by tens.
That's a sobering thought, and a related sobering thought that I have every time I read the newspaper is "Somewhere, somebody professionally obsessed with this topic spent more time on the footnote of page 7 of their 5th deck than this reporter will in their entire career."
"And did the reporter talk to them? No, the reporter doesn't even know their name. If we got really, really lucky, the reporter's rolodex includes someone who is happy to chat who has eaten in the same lunch room recently."
I don't say this to knock reporters. Michael Lewis, for example, is a sorta-kinda reporter, and the Big Short is a riveting dramatization of this story and seems to get most of the consequential details right.
But then he wrote Flash Boys, which is... at least a dramatization.
But then he wrote Flash Boys, which is... at least a dramatization.
