The Big Short and the System That Broke the Global Economy

Описание: Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world — one book at a time.

This episode explores The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis — a systems-level examination of how perception, power, and incentives shaped the 2008 financial crisis.

Rather than treating the collapse as the result of bad actors or unforeseeable events, the book reveals a financial system structured to reward short-term profit, obscure risk, and discourage skepticism. Through the perspectives of a small group of outsiders, Lewis shows how subprime mortgages were transformed into complex financial instruments that few understood, yet nearly everyone trusted. Credit rating agencies assigned top ratings to deeply unstable assets, while major institutions relied on models and assumptions detached from reality.

As risk accumulated, the system’s incentives ensured that warnings were ignored and accountability diffused. Complexity became a shield, allowing catastrophic decisions to appear reasonable within institutional logic. What emerged was not an accidental failure, but a predictable outcome of a system optimized for growth without understanding.

Rather than focusing on individual behavior or surface-level explanations, this episode treats the financial crisis as a systems problem — examining the structures, narratives, and feedback loops that allowed risk to grow unseen until collapse became inevitable.

🔗 Explore More

🎬 Mini Explainer (short visual overview):
👉    • The Big Short and the System That Broke th...  

🎧 Listen on Spotify (audio-only Deep Dive):
👉 https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Mcd...

❤️ Support the project on Patreon:
👉   / crisisinperception  

📺 Subscribe on YouTube:
👉    / @crisisinperception