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Perhaps EVAY misjudged you by suggesting you were unfamiliar with the topic, just as you presumed to speak for him as to the neutrality/bias of Mr. Lewis. Just saying.
And if you think that Michael Lewis is the ultimate neutral observer then you might need to be the one that needs educating.
Perhaps EVAY misjudged you by suggesting you were unfamiliar with the topic, just as you presumed to speak for him as to the neutrality/bias of Mr. Lewis. Just saying.
Just say your say. Please leave the ventriloquizing to your betters on the radio, and give us your take on Michael Lewis, who stands pre-debunked before us, on your mere assertion.
Are you content to leave things right there? Is it within your preference to dispel the prevailing state of ignorance (which you clearly expressed) in this thread as to the actual case the which, so far, you are merely pointing at?
What's your take on Lewis? What the is wrong with him? I know zip on this one...
Educate me, jefe.
I'm not saying it wasn't an interesting and informative book, just that Lewis makes no bones about his bias. He cut his teeth 20+ years ago with "Liars Poker" after a short stint out of college working for a big investment bank.
I didn't read the book. What gets revealed?
Can you describe the appearance or identifying characteristics of the bias to which you have alluded again?
b
What exactly does Lewis cop to in the book?
You really like to stir up don't you?
Have you read it yet CC, or are you just telling us what you heard about it?
How about a straight answer on your hitherto obscure beef with Lewis. You still haven't told us anything about it. More info, please?
You really like to stir up don't you?
Yes, and I read liars poker when it came out too. The guy is a good writer and can personalize topics that generally are pretty dry. But IMHO it's kind of like reading James Michener. Don't take everything he says as gospel fact.
Please don't recommend books to CC. I know you probably can't tell by the volume of posts in this thread, but he has a job.
Thanks.
Fair enough, but I don't think the conversation ever quite got that far.
I know you are jealous Manny but it is what it is. BTW, has Jekka out grown your worthless ass yet? If not it's just a matter of time.
Pinch of salt too with Matt Taibbi, but overall, the picture, very complex (complexity and opacity being key tools in financial fraud and theft), is more true than false.
Dylan Ratigan is another one worth reading:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-esk..._b_627833.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_Ratigan
Dang, looks like Manny woke up just long enough to take a leak and vomit out one post and then went back to bed for another nap.
Steve Forbes, inherited wealthy dude who's never done himself and perennial flat-tax pusher, loves that Byrd is dead and Scott is flip-flopping on financial reform.
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/28/steve-forbes-byrd/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar%27s_Poker
That making large amounts of money in a capitalist system consists primarily of the ability to be lucky.
What? Surely, the sheer drive and determination of someone is what makes/breaks their future financial stability! Luck has no determining factor whatsoever! /snark, /conservative
To be honest, obviously people with drive/determination/ideas are better suited to "making their own luck". But there's probably 100 people out there with drive/determination/etc, but only 5 of those 100 will end up with the right set of cir stances to make it.
Oh, for pete's sake!
What a todo about nothing.
The reason I brought up Lewis' book, as well as the other two, was not any attempt to present a mass-market writer as a financial guru. It was simply to suggest to those who cling to the time-worn but sadly inadequate explanation that FandF were the beginning and end of the housing debacle, along with anyone else 'not republican', should look a tiny bit further than their favorite boogey-men, and check out an easier-to-read description of what happened than the writings of Krugman, Steigler, or the Chicago school.
I spent about 15 years of my life directing the equity analyses of a certain sector of the market in a Fortune 50 company and representing that analysis in American and European debt and equity markets, and then teaching it in B-schools.
I don't take Lewis as the be-all-and-end-all, but his 'man-in-the-street' analysis is FAR, FAR, FAR superior in explanatory schema to what actually happened than blaming some feckless congressional lawyers who know about as much about finance as my grandson. (who is 5)
Is swearing really necessary?
Welcome back to the thread.
By referring to the bolded so indirectly you did honor to our intelligence but it was apparently not equal to the task. We might have been spared the fruitless detour by means of more direct address, but sometimes people never get past preliminary throat clearing to the more direct issues at hand. We never got that far in this thread. JMO.
At least we found out CC read the Lewis book too, reluctant though he seems to discuss it in any detail. You might be able to talk to him about it intelligibly. (I had little luck doing so.)
Others have already read the Lewis book so maybe that's a good place for me to start. Thanks again for the tip.
Last edited by Winehole23; 06-29-2010 at 03:25 AM. Reason: arcane heavy metal reference, removed
WH (by the way, congrats on the new pic...Is swearing really necessary?
Welcome back to the thread.
By referring to the bolded so indirectly you did honor to our intelligence but it was apparently not equal to the task. We might have been spared the fruitless detour by means of more direct address, but sometimes people never get past preliminary throat clearing to the more direct issues at hand. We never got that far in this thread. JMO.
At least we found out CC read the Lewis book too, reluctant though he seems to discuss it in any detail. You might be able to talk to him about it intelligibly. (I had little luck doing so.)
Others have already read the Lewis book so maybe that's a good place for me to start. Thanks again for the tip.). I actually did do a minor precis on the book in some other thread a while back. I don't remember the thread, but you yourself had asked me what was in the book, and I said that it wasn't easy to do a cliff note version of it, but generally it was a rendering of the extent to which the "masters of the universe" who run Wall Street firms were themselves singularly unaware of the extent of the risk involved in the credit-default swaps and derivatives in mortgages that they were putting together, and that we were all undone by it.
I also read the review that you linked, and disagree with the author of the review that Lewis was holding up the protagonists of his book as any sort of heroes at all. In fact, the first one is presented as he is...i.e. a total geek with asperger's and obsessive-compulsive disorder, who was really the only person in america with the time (no one else would hire him) and requisite personality disorders to figure out what was in the prospectuses (prospecti?)
that accompanied all of the mortgage-derivative offerings.
Finally, if CC actually did read Lewis' book, I find his continued reliance on blaming everything on F and F even more disingenuous.
Surely, if we try really really hard, we can get past the overly facile "convenient scapegoats" to the more difficult realizations that some of our most cherished beliefs about how financial markets work need revision.
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