Michael Lewis (aka Mr. Tabitha Soren) C or D/S & D

on Colbert tonight.

I discussed Billy Beane's self-image as Captain Kirk w/ him at a SABR convention for about a minute.

the nytimes sports magazine that printed a couple of those lewis pieces and the great dfw-on-federer thing from two years ago just folded

michael lewis goes to iceland. one of the funniest things i've read about the meltdown -- unless you're icelandic, i guess. i like the story's running sub-theme about the relative roles of women and men in iceland (and elsewhere).

One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it. Women worked in the banks, but not in the risktaking jobs. As far as I can tell, during Iceland’s boom, there was just one woman in a senior position inside an Icelandic bank. Her name is Kristin Petursdottir, and by 2005 she had risen to become deputy C.E.O. for Kaupthing in London. “The financial culture is very male-dominated,” she says. “The culture is quite extreme. It is a pool of sharks. Women just despise the culture.” Petursdottir still enjoyed finance. She just didn’t like the way Icelandic men did it, and so, in 2006, she quit her job. “People said I was crazy,” she says, but she wanted to create a financial-services business run entirely by women. To bring, as she puts it, “more feminine values to the world of finance.”

Today her firm is, among other things, one of the very few profitable financial businesses left in Iceland. After the stock exchange collapsed, the money flooded in. A few days before we met, for instance, she heard banging on the front door early one morning and opened it to discover a little old man. “I’m so fed up with this whole system,” he said. “I just want some women to take care of my money.”

I like to compare articles about Iceland from after the crash with this one from before it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/18/iceland

I was reading that guardian article and assuming it was from 2006 or something. May 2008! Less than a year later they're walking around with sacks of money and blowing up their cars.

the financial crisis is crowning michael lewis king of magazine journalism - i get like actually excited when i see a link w/his name on it

that iceland piece is great--not michael lewis but the nyer article abt it is great too

His report from New Orleans a few weeks after Katrina is great, too.

I just read that Iceland piece, someone had copy/pasted it on another board - the funny thing is, halfway thru reading it, without knowing it was from VF or who wrote it, i was just like 'yeah this has to be michael lewis' - dude brings the fukkin HEAT

also i hate iceland and wish them all ill

got exited for a new michael lewis piece when i saw this thread bumpd

yeah, this thred, the castro thred and the avalanches thred should be revived sparingly.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/03/reality_check_vanity_fairs_fis.html

Calls out Lewis for his description of Icelanders as inbred trogolodytes

Amongst other things. Does not call them out for implying that everyone knows Bjork.

on buffett http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=12ef5554-1023-4be9-ad93-681003b280ef

^^ good article, just read it this morning

http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/media.canada.com/24be34eb-ecfe-4969-88c2-5aa898db4139/buffett.jpg

new piece on AIG - http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/aig200908

wow thx 4 posting

excerpt from his new book - http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/04/wall-street-excerpt-201004

Read that the other day. Ends on just the right note, the whole piece is superb.

yeah i havent had a chance to read it yet - looking fwd to it

1 of the guys with a hedge fund in this has a glass eye and aspergers ? that is a good character

I just finished the big short - pretty fantastic, although I would have preferred there to have been more hard number crunching. the whole thing would be pretty lol if it was about some fictitious country, instead it's pretty sad and makes me want to move overseas.

he's got an article in the new vanity fair abt greece, it's pretty crazy

thanks, just reading

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010?currentPage=all

The glass-eyed Asperger hedge fund manager from The Big Short seems to have been portrayed with more than a bit of caricature by Lewis, so I'm not sure I buy his characterisations.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-07/burry-discusses-investing-in-farmland-real-estate-gold-video.html

MICHAEL LEWIS: Merrill Lynch fired analyst who predicted banking crisis because banks (clients) went ballistic
http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-lewis-merrill-lynch-fired-analyst-who-predicted-irish-bank-crisis-after-banks-clients-went-ballistic-2011-2

another great article on the financial collapse of a eurpoean country (this time, ireland): http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/03/michael-lewis-ireland-201103?currentPage=all

he's apparently compiling these vanity fair pieces (greece, iceland, ireland) into a book

bump 4 fanboys

now on germany - http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/09/europe-201109

did anyone read this? wasnt really sold on it tbh

idk i thought it was pretty classic lewis -- not really as informational as his other european pieces, especially if you know your EU history, but i dug it nonetheless

really can't wait for his book

yeah i found it entertaining but pretty bullshit i guess? idk trying to explain germanys role in the credit crunch by using some stereotypes that he got out of an old book just seems weird

pretty BULLSHIT you say

AHA

classic pun

yeah i feel you -- i'm sure a lot of germans weren't really happy to read that the backbone of the piece was "well, germans might be really obsessed w/ poop" -- but that's a pretty unique, if not arguably interesting, way to tie a story together. and in some respects that's sorta what he does

i hadn't really been aware of the extent to which germany was the ultimate buyer for the toxic assets, so his point that germany is really bailing itself out rather than say greece was interesting. and that kind of fits with his theory about them wanting the outward appearance of being "clean".

but it feels like lewis was too embarrassed of his schiesse theory to discuss it with his german interviewees, except for his poor driver/translator, so the germans are frozen out of the conversation about their national character/stereotypes in a way that the other countries didn't seem to be. and it's already a wackier, more tenuous theory. i mean, i wonder what that finance minister thought of the story when it came out?

his point that germany is really bailing itself out rather than say greece was interesting.

yeah i wasnt aware of this either

i hadn't really been aware of the extent to which germany was the ultimate buyer for the toxic assets, so his point that germany is really bailing itself out rather than say greece was interesting. and that kind of fits with his theory about them wanting the outward appearance of being "clean".

yeah, if you read the 'big short' you'd already be familiar w/ lewis citing instances of american bankers openly referring to "stupid germans", but i really wasn't aware of the scope of it either

You guys need to watch Debtocracy -

http://www.debtocracy.gr/indexen.html

It's polemical but also important, I think.

The euro bailouts are just playing for time in the bond markets while banks try to subtly move their money out of problem areas; they have nothing to do with actually helping countries pay their debts.

For instance (as noted in Debtocracy) the terms of the first Greek bailout obliged the Greek government to spend tens of millions of euros on German and French military technology. As a quid pro quo. So follow the money: from German and French taxpayers... to the Greek government... and finally winding up in the pockets of French and German banks and dealers of arms. It's one of the most massive looting scams ever conceived: from the public purse straight to the pockets of private industry.

a lol hueg super entertaining piece containing one really good insight and an absurd psychological supposition tying it all together is p much lewis boilerplate, needless to say i ate it up

the poop

tracer hardly think tens of millions of euros would rank on the list of most massive looting scams ever conceived

Tens of millions just for the arms contracts alone

The bulk of it is just straight paying off banks

yeah but at the risk of questioning a film called debtocracy im not positive that you know the rest of the money can be assumed to be doing the same thing as that relatively small chunk of the whole

I'm not saying anything controversial, as far as I know! It's just a big circular operation - public bailout money going in the pockets of private creditors

lol yeah sry im just against all these documentaries 'inside job' 'the corporation' exposing corporate lies dun dun - tho to some extent like the money is gonna go away get paid etc somehow - not that its being approached in an optimal way at all - imho they just need to do away w/the euro would be the best approach

Its worth noting that the German and French banks are in such distress due to the reserve requirements of the Basel II banking accords, which in attempting to improve bank solvency, ironically pushed them to load up on sovereign debt of questionable credit worthiness.

The Euro banks began this global recession far more leveraged than even their American investment bank counterparts, which were running 35:1. Since their reserves (the 1 in that ratio) were partly held in Mediterranean co. debt thats falling in value, the contraction in Euro area lending would be more severe than in the US without some form of bailout.

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/11/michael-lewis-201111

abt california state & local govts

Lewis spoke about the lawsuit that Michael Oher, the young Black football player in The Blind Side, has filed against the Tuohys--Lewis's friends, and the white couple who took Oher in: [4] pic.twitter.com/zzi0LslSFV

— Samanth Subramanian (@samanth_s) October 3, 2023

🤔

I'd be suspicious of any untrained lay person making a medical diagnosis of brain damage in someone they haven't recently spoken to, but there's no question that many former NFL players suffer from brain damage, so he's got a point.

he does not have a point

Good thing he won't be called to testify then. Whew! Close call.

Oof.

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/review-michael-lewiss-going-infinite

Matt Levin today:

I am about halfway through Going Infinite, Michael Lewis' book about Sam Bankman-Fried, and I am very much enjoying it. Many of the reviews that I have read of the book complain that Lewis does not sufficiently explain that Bankman-Fried is Guilty and Bad, Actually, but that is not the book that he wanted to write or the one I want to read. He wanted to understand and explain Bankman-Fried's psychology and tell a good story. If you want to read a moral condemnation of crypto theft, you can get that anywhere. You go to Michael Lewis for character and story.

Also, reading those reviews you would think that the book is a defense of Bankman-Fried, but it is actually quite damning.

(Levine)

He wanted to understand and explain Bankman-Fried's psychology and tell a good story.

About Sam Bankman-Fried, the bestest boy ever?

Ever wanna feel the magic of being swept up by the thrills of the criminal ring of a theiving fraudster? Forget the moralizing, that is EXACTLY what I needed, and this book delivered.

Remember how good you felt when that nerd loser was actually good at fraud in Wolf of Wall St? It’s like that but extra credible because ~crypto~! 5 big tomatoes.

haven't read the book, but I liked this New Yorker review

The book is not, as it turns out, a hagiography. Bankman-Fried is not portrayed as a hero. But he isn’t portrayed as an antihero, either. The book’s tone is one of tender beguilement, with the occasional flash of remonstrance; Lewis isn’t sympathetic, exactly, but he is defiantly open to evidence of Bankman-Fried’s innocence. Bankman-Fried does come off as a recognizable contrarian. But perhaps the most relevant contrarian subject in this magnificently ambiguous book is Lewis himself. Lewis likes to write about figures who survey the informational landscape, weigh the probabilities, and, under conditions of uncertainty, take expensive gambles—which is exactly what Lewis himself has done.

Lewis likes to write about figures who survey the informational landscape, weigh the probabilities, and, under conditions of uncertainty, take expensive gambles

Waiting for his Madoff book, Ponziball.

Just...my guy:

Lewis focused on the material benefits Oher got from the Tuohys. “Did you get a sense of how much money they spent on him when he was living with them? They bought him a truck. They bought him clothes. They housed him.” He continued: “There’s not a whiff of possibility the Tuohys are going to milk money off Michael Oher. You’ve gotta sort of know more about them. They’re rich. And generous. They aren’t stingy rich people. They’re openhanded rich people.”

When I brought up aspects of his book that I believed were inaccurate — among them, that Oher barely knew how to play football when he first came to live with the Tuohys — Lewis said that he was confident that the people who witnessed Oher’s story in real time had provided him with an accurate account. I told him I had seen Terio Franklin’s house and that I did not think its description as a trailer that served as Oher’s temporary base camp was correct. “You should ask the Tuohys about that,” he replied.

In a profile of Lewis in The Guardian last October, he seemed to attribute Oher’s “change of behavior,” as he put it, to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease that afflicts some football players, which can only be diagnosed after death, through a brain autopsy. “This is what happens to football players who get hit in the head,” he said. “They run into problems with violence and aggression.” Lewis told me his inference that Oher had C.T.E. was made in anger, and he regretted it, but he then repeated it. “It should be part of the conversation about Michael Oher,” he said.

And on top of that!

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/michael-lewis-speaks-sam-bankman-181123549.html

i'm reading this now. lewis has a REALLY hard time relating to black people. the way he writes about oher and other "Blacks" is almost entirely anthropological, with him dimly wondering aloud why "they" don't think like him. i'm enjoying the book, but all of these moments are making me cringe. and let's not forget oher's white financial supporters, a husband who "doesn't know what race he is" and a wife who was brought up explicitly racist and talks about oher lovingly, but with the tone of "look at the beast." so so so weird.
― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Monday, September 25, 2006 11:17 AM (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

some smart takes about the Tuohys in that other thread (though everyone else yelled at him)

I strongly suspect it occurred to Lewis that mmmmmaybe his next piece should be about people who aren't famous and actually do shit.

https://wapo.st/3Xr9usa

well, it also seems like an extension of his 2018 book The Fifth Risk

Oh I'm sure! But still, convenient.

I think Lewis’ best skill is describing and explaining the significance of arcane technical things.