Liar's Poker

I read this article by Michael Lewis in Portfolio and it's a very well written piece about the ignorance of Wall Street for some time combined with his viewpoint having worked at Salomon Brothers in 1986 where the start of this madness originated.

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/national-news/portfolio/2008/11/11...

Also talks about how the existence of the credit default swap (CDS) market made this crisis significantly worse because not only were the actual underlying homeowner loans crashing, but these synethically created loans as well.