"The Big Short Part 2: AI Boogaloo?"
by John Wilder
“Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play.” – Michael Burry, October 31, 2025
Ah, Michael Burry. I love him for several reasons. First, the man who turned the financial Armageddon of the Great Recession into a personal piggy bank. While the rest of Wall Street was busy high-fiving over adjustable-rate mortgages like they were the next Beanie Babies™, Burry had it right. If life’s a casino, Burry was the guy who spotted the rigged roulette wheel, bet it all against red, and walked away repeatedly tossing the croupier’s pinky ring in the air. But more on that.
Let’s rewind the tape, because Burry’s backstory isn’t just a hedge fund horror story; it’s the stuff of legend. Born in 1971, Burry was that kid dissecting frog guts and getting into high school early, and leaving it earlier than a Chicago inner-city kid, but instead of hitting the streets, Burry hit Vanderbilt med school by age 19. He got an ophthalmology residency at Stanford, because nothing says “future financial legend” like peering into eyeballs.
But Burry’s peepers were always fixed on the fine print of balance sheets, not dilated pupils. In 1997, he launched a value-investing blog that read like Warren Buffett’s fever dream crossed with a pathology report. By 2000, he’d parlayed his blog into Scion Capital™, a $600 million fund where he played the markets like a man solving a Rubik’s Cube® blindfolded.
Then came the subprime saga during the Housing Bubble. It was 2005, and America was drunk on easy credit. Flippers were flipping houses, banks bundling toxic multiple hundred-thousand-dollar home loans made to $14,000 a year illegal alien strawberry pickers. Yes, this happened. They called these triple-A quality financial treasures. Why not jump in? Everyone from soccer moms to strip-mall moguls mortgaging their McMansions to the hilt.
Burry? He saw the rot. He pored over mortgage prospectuses like they were Penthouse centerfolds, spotting the emperor’s new clothes in the form of adjustable-rate mortgages that would reset into huge payments. I was offered a mortgage of over seven times my salary. I asked the banker, “Why are you offering this? I can’t afford to pay that.” “I’m required to tell you that you qualify for it.”
Burry’s investors threatened mutiny as the carrying cost for his bets mounted. Undeterred, Burry plunked down to buy $1 billion in credit default swaps, essentially insurance policies on the housing house of cards He bet that it all would burn. And burn it did.
By 2008, Lehman® imploded, and Bear plowed its Stearns© into oblivion Burry’s investors pocketed $720 million after fees. Burry personally cleared $100 million, enough to buy a lifetime supply of black market Asian kidneys. He could even do the occasional eye exam for fun and pleasure since his medical license remains intact.
The kicker? He shut down Scion in 2008, tired of the thankless grind, and because nothing says “peak contrarian” like cashing out as the casino explodes behind you. His payment was that he was played in a movie about this epic heist, "The Big Short" (recommended), and that he was played by Christian Bale, who actually asked Burry for his actual clothing (cargo shorts and shirts) so he could wear them in the movie. I hope Micheal Chiklis asks to borrow my deodorant when he plays me in a movie.
Bale nailed the eccentric genius vibe: the twitching eye, the Asperger’s-adjacent intensity, the social awkwardness that makes Elon look like a prom king. Bale even learned to drum (Burry’s hobby) for the role. Imagine Chiklis having to learn to get in my daily step count – I’m up to 29.
Now, in a market puffed up like a Kardashian’s hooters, Burry is whispering (okay, Tweeting®) the dad wisdom of all dad wisdoms: sometimes, son, you just sit this hand out. No bluster, just a quiet nod to the sucker’s paradise we’re all pretending isn’t a powder keg from ACME™ while a drunken stripper pole-dances next to it lit cigar.
Generally, Burry’s X® feed is a cryptic cocktail of charts, quips, and quiet alarms. That October 31 post? It’s the mic-drop missive in a string of sidelong swipes at the surreal stock spectacle that AI has wrought. Just days prior, Burry had tweeted innocuous eye charts and “move along” memes, like a oracle playing coy before the deluge.
On Tuesday (November 4, 2025), Burry is making jokes about being short (where you sell stock you don’t own in order to buy it back later after it goes down in price – it’s like selling cars you don’t own). Or maybe about shorts. But peeling back the posts, Burry’s brewing a bearish broth. He’s been wrong before, just like me he’s predicted seven of the last two stock market crashes. In 2023, he warned of a “bubble of all bubbles,” while dumping his positions. He also admitted he was wrong.
Now? His latest dispatches echo that eerie prescience: bubbles abound, but betting against them isn’t always the balm. Sometimes, the house wins by default, by luring you in. It’s irony incarnate: the man who shorted the subprime supernova is now advising abstinence over aggression. Why play when the poker table’s tilted toward the trillion-dollar trusts and AI hype machines? Burry’s not yelling “fire” in a crowded theater; he’s slipping a note under the door: “evacuate quietly, kids.”
And boy, does the timing tickle like a tetanus shot. Today, Bitcoin dropped from $109,500 at dawn to a dippy $99,800 by lunch, rebounding to $101k like a drunk uncle at last call. Is crypto’s crashing alone, or is it the canary in the coal mine, signaling strains in the broader bedlam where Nvidia’s notched north of $5 trillion (more than Germany’s GDP)?
But, I think Burry is trying to tell us something simpler. Shorting the subprime was surgical; shorting everything now? That’s swinging a scalpel at a swarm of bees. Better to bank your bullets, brew your beans, and watch the wasps war from the porch swing. In this everything-extravaganza, where your grandma’s got GameStop™ options and your neighbor’s mining Monero® in the man-cave it pays to at least pay attention to Burry. Play if you must, and maybe, just maybe, those Beanie Babies™ will once surge in value. After all, it’s different this time."
Note: This is not financial advice. I am an Internet humorist who gets paid nothing for writing this. If you take this humor column as financial advice (which I didn’t give anyway) you’re more stoned than Cheech and Chong were in 1977. And if you like Burry’s right, great - just don’t blame me if stocks surge and bite your shorts (borrowed or not). Disclosure: I didn’t mention any stocks because I might buy some. Or sell some. Or do nothing.
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