Michael Lewis' seminal book on the excess of the finance industry in the 80s, "Liar's Poker," seems positively quaint today. A CEO bringing home 3.1 million? Were we really upset by that?
In his recent article in Conde Nast Portfolio, The End, Lewis performs a masterful deconstruction of the sub-prime mess, but his real insight is that transformation of private investment banks to public corporations created a dangerous concoction of infallability, idiocy and arrogance. Transferring financial consequence from partnerships to shareholders, Wall Street freed itself from the rigor of common sense that somehow the rest of us seem to know instinctively: don't spend more than you have, don't buy a financial product you can't understand, don't buy it from someone who doesn't understand it either.
Another recent article in the New York Times dissects the lack of oversight from top down at CitiGroup. It's as informative as it is scary. Click here to read.
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