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NFT: Michael Lewis is out promoting the reprint of Liar's Poker.

manh george : 10/30/2014 12:50 pm
25 years later. He is extremely cynical about how WS has evolved since the publication--not without justification, I think.

One of the strongest ironies surrounding that book and other negative media about WS is that, far from acting as a cautionary guide, many bright kids coming out of college in the intervening years took it as a how-too book--minus the strippers, of course.

Quote:

Michael Lewis: It had the opposite effect of what I expected. I didn't think of it as a moralistic tale about Wall Street ... but I did think that for someone who had some other idea of what to do with their lives, it would demystify it, and maybe they could go on and do what they were supposed to do.

Instead, I swear after six months, I had a thousand letters from kids saying, "I'm a junior at Ohio State and I've read your how-to book about how to get ahead on Wall Street. Is there anything you left out? Because you made me even more interested in doing it."




This has apparently been true about several major negative pieces about WS, such as the movie "Wall Street." That was depicted in the movie "Boiler Room," which had young scam artist brokers memorizing lines from the earlier movie.
It is a fascinating book.....  
Mike in Marin : 10/30/2014 1:03 pm : link
and I've read it a few times over the years.

I connected most with the insight into guy's who worked their way up out of the mail room like Rainieri, and the insiders view into how the money is made and lost, etc, more than the crazy stories of debauchery, which exist in many industrial centers of wealth and power, though are/were especially common in Wall St. of the 80s.

Overall, it was groundbreaking for how it opened the kimono on that culture. And so well-written and entertaining. He's an fantastic writer no doubt, and have read many of his books and articles since.
Not surprising  
Mark from Jersey : 10/30/2014 1:03 pm : link
Portrayed like rock stars. And not enough people going to jail.
Yeah, Mike.  
manh george : 10/30/2014 1:13 pm : link
Starting with Liar's Poker, he has a terrific track record as a non-fiction writer for mass consumption on an unusually wide array of topics, from football (The Blind Side) to baseball (Moneyball) and back to Wall Street (The Big Short). I think he kinda got lost a little with Flash Boys, but it was certainly popular.

His funniest book that didn't sell that well was The New New Thing, which had me laughing out loud, which is very rare.
manh  
Mike in Marin : 10/30/2014 1:25 pm : link
I looooved the New New Thing. Great book on the VC world and the new economy. Changed the way I looked at business and technology.

I have the Big Short at home (know many of the stories, but have not read it).

Did not read Moneyball, not that interested in baseball.

Have not read Flashboys yet, but one of the key players (a good guy) was my boss for about a year at a well known investment bank...and I worked with and knew a few others based on the 60 minutes piece.
here's an article from a few years ago  
Enzo : 10/30/2014 1:29 pm : link
where Lewis met with Gutfreund for lunch and they had a little "reunion".
Link - ( New Window )
His comments on Meredith Whitney are fairly nauseating.  
manh george : 10/30/2014 1:37 pm : link
I am confident that she didn't come up with her big revelation on her own--I'm guessing the hedgies were her real mentors.

The evidence is how incredibly awful she was in her discussion of the municipal bond sector. A truly world class merger of ego and incompetence. Would she be so smart one time, and so incredibly stupid the next if left to her own devices in both cases? I am guessing "no."
Agree Manh  
Bill2 : 10/30/2014 10:12 pm : link
Its was a wonderful book

Enzo...yes I remember that postscript

for those who liked it...essential to know the second coda story of LTCM...kinda of a bridge in a way to trends which played out again and again up to 2008...and then morphed again into a story of the brilliantly misguided.

and as prologue the almost quaint Barbarians at the Gate captured the same kind of hyper greed for a smaller stakes played by a crasser breed.

Agree Manh...like Abby and other over promoted guru's of WS...I thought Meredith eventually spent too much time with sell side "analysts" who contrived sophist arguments but forgot it was a hall of mirrors.

remember Henry the K

RE: His comments on Meredith Whitney are fairly nauseating.  
MetsAreBack : 10/31/2014 3:46 pm : link
In comment 11948376 manh george said:
Quote:
I am confident that she didn't come up with her big revelation on her own--I'm guessing the hedgies were her real mentors.

The evidence is how incredibly awful she was in her discussion of the municipal bond sector. A truly world class merger of ego and incompetence. Would she be so smart one time, and so incredibly stupid the next if left to her own devices in both cases? I am guessing "no."


MG - I grew up in the world a bank analyst. Whitney was a competitor of ours. It is fact that hedge funds fed her the housing bubble data and analysis, particularly Steve Eisman, as he was originally her mentor at Oppenheimer.

To Meredith's credit, and maybe this is why Eisman used her, she was and is very good with the media - she markets herself well. Also pretty cool that she married a professional wrestler.

But I know several people that know her well - she is anything but a genius. Helps to know the right people though.
How did MW's advisory business do? And how is her hedge fund?  
BurberryManning : 10/31/2014 3:55 pm : link
.
.....  
BrettNYG10 : 10/31/2014 4:55 pm : link
Her brokerage unit was unprofitable and as of June she was down 4.7% YTD.
Bloomberg - ( New Window )
RE: .....  
BurberryManning : 10/31/2014 5:32 pm : link
In comment 11950150 BrettNYG10 said:
Quote:
Her brokerage unit was unprofitable and as of June she was down 4.7% YTD. Bloomberg - ( New Window )


Well surely it's just a matter of time until her 6th derivative guesstimates pay off big...
In mid 2012....  
manh george : 10/31/2014 9:46 pm : link
MW was the Keynote speaker at a free day-long conference put on by a major tech company as a marketing extravaganza, speaking about munis--I forget which one. I stayed just long enough to make sure that her rap hadn't change (it hadn't), and then let the tech company know that if this was an insight into their intellectual skills and investment capabilities, they ought to merge with AOL for an upgrade.
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