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Michael Lewis -- The big short
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This book will help you view the financial markets and the players
that drive them with a more skeptical eye.  Yes, you were already
less than sanguine.  But, this book will improve your awareness and
understanding of why you were suspicious and why you should be.

In part, this book is a description and an explanation of the
financial markets during 2000 through 2010.  But, it is also a
description of a few people in that market and their personalities,
especially a few that helped bring that market down.  It's also a
morality tale about evil people who were stealing money from those in
the lower middle class who needed a home and about a few people who
helped bring that process to a halt.

Question: Why did financial players sell so many mortgages to poor
and lower middle class people?  Surely they knew that the likelihood
of repayment on these NINJA loans (no income no job or assets) was
low.  (1) Doing so was necessary because of growing inequality and
stagnant wages.  Either you borrowed or you accepted a lower and
lower standard of living.  (2) The skewed income and wealth
distribution created a larger and larger pool of lower middle class
people to lend to.  (3) Because these borrowers were a greater risk,
they could be charged a higher rate of interest.  (4) The financial
players in the mortgage origination and securitization chain either
did not understand these investments and their risks (they were
stupid or they understood by chose to ignore the risks out of greed
(they were evil).  You take your pick.  Either way, it became a way
to defraud and cheat the lower middle class.

This book can be viewed as an attempt to explain what it takes to
uncover what everyone else does not want to see or be aware of or
admit.  Perhaps it's a genetic or a personality flaw: the compulsion
to view everyone and everything with suspicion.  Or, maybe it's a
special skill: the ability to concentrate on and investigate a
company or investment instrument until you uncover what others do
not know.  One of Lewis's goals in this book is to give us examples
and descriptions and even explanations of each of these.