Michael Lewis was on Charlie Rose earlier this week. He was promoting his new book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
, which is about how fraud, negligence, greed and groupthink created a socialist casino, where the profits went into the hands of a wealthy few, but the losses were absorbed by Joe Public. He thinks Congress will be forced to break up the big banks and make them less profitable.
I dunno. I think he's probably a little too optimistic. He thinks the damage was so horrendous that Congress will be forced to act. But he also thought that Liar's Poker
would mark the end of an era, when in reality, it was just the beginning. To his dismay, many people embraced it as a how-to manual rather than a cautionary tale. I hope he's right - I think the really big banks have become too large and too profitable, at the expense of the little guy - but I suspect he's underestimated the influence the banking industry has on Congress and the White House.
Of more interest to baseball fans, he says his next project is a sequel to Moneyball
.
Labels: The Greater Depression
