Chapters 6-7 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 6. Spider-Man at The Venetian.

There was a conference in January of 2007 in Las Vegas for subprime mortgage bond salesmen and buyers. Eisman and his team attended, as did Ledley and Hockett. The first night, Eisman found himself attending a dinner thrown by Deutsche Bank. At the dinner, Lippmann intentionally sat CDO buyers next to people who sold them or were otherwise considered on the wrong side of the equation. Eisman was sat next to a man named Wing Chau, a CDO manager. During dinner, Chau described how he packaged and sold CDOs for Merrill Lynch. As Chau talked, Eisman realized that Chau had no idea what was in the CDOs that he was selling and that he knew very little about them. Not only this, but Eisman realized that Chau was selling CDOs that were synthesized from other...