Financier Michael Burry became a household name after the 2015 film “The Big Short” which depicted his bet on the subprime-mortgage meltdown that sparked the 2008 financial crisis.
What most people tend to forget is that on the other side of the the mortgage collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)’ bet made by Burry there was notably Goldman Sachs (GS) . CDOs are loans, mortgages and other assets that investment banks package and offer to institutional investors
In the book “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” from Michael Lewis, it’s said that Burry decided to bet on the implosion of the subprime market after he noticed that a lot of people couldn’t actually afford to pay their mortgages. But lenders were finding new financial instruments to justify handing them new money.