In their books The Big Short and The Greatest Trade Ever, authors Michael Lewis and Greg Zuckerman, respectively, managed to create rollicking good romps out of stories of how certain investors who had the foresight, the derring-do — and, of course, the cash — purchased credit default swaps on pools of junky mortgage bonds in order to profit from the collapse of the housing market. But even the most finely written text can’t quite capture the excitement, the magic, the thrill of what it feels like to bank billions of dollars as the rest of the economy burns. This weekend, to accompany a feature about Magnetar, a hedge fund that profited handsomely off the collapse, This American Life hired the dudes from Avenue Q to give the process the Broadway treatment. It is awesome.
