rssLiar’s Poker Comes Full Circle
Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 5:12 pm
- 7 Comments
Michael Lewis, whose “Liar’s Poker” chronicled greed and excess on Wall Street in the 1980s, declares an end (finally) to the era of greed and excess on Wall Street, in a piece for this month’s Portfolio. The cover pretty much sums up not just his story, but all the bad economic news today:
Here’s Lewis on how the financial world in the 1980s seems like such a simpler time:
I thought I was writing a period piece about the 1980s in America. Not for a moment did I suspect that the financial 1980s would last two full decades longer or that the difference in degree between Wall Street and ordinary life would swell into a difference in kind. I expected readers of the future to be outraged that back in 1986, the C.E.O. of Salomon Brothers, John Gutfreund, was paid $3.1 million; I expected them to gape in horror when I reported that one of our traders, Howie Rubin, had moved to Merrill Lynch, where he lost $250 million; I assumed they’d be shocked to learn that a Wall Street C.E.O. had only the vaguest idea of the risks his traders were running. What I didn’t expect was that any future reader would look on my experience and say, “How quaint.”
I imagine Lewis’ future readers, a decade or so from now, following his adventures again, this time as he navigates a new financial era marked by echoes of the 1930s.
7 Comments
Comment posted January 27, 2009 @ 3:45 pm
Cover's picture is awesome. Big things fall also, eventually.
Power is nothing, if one doesnt have control.
Comment posted January 27, 2009 @ 3:47 pm
Lewis does it again.
Hears some interesting stuff about the content, as wall street gets satirised.
Comment posted March 28, 2009 @ 2:58 pm
I read Lewis' Liar Poker over a decade ago. The story depicted the excess of Wall Street from the firm Salomon Brothers which collapsed later and was bought by Citigroup, which itself collapsed recently and avoided bankruptcy thanks to the Government. Piece of cake. In fact we used to play liar poker in the financial industry, it is a fun game. And by the way I live near the bull on the picture. The rendition of this laying bull is excellent. So there is hardly a more familiar story to me. Also, if you look at the building on the extreme right of the picture, at the bottom on the ground level there is a small blue curtain. Yes this is a Citibank (Citigroup ) bank. Small world.
Comment posted March 28, 2009 @ 9:58 pm
I read Lewis' Liar Poker over a decade ago. The story depicted the excess of Wall Street from the firm Salomon Brothers which collapsed later and was bought by Citigroup, which itself collapsed recently and avoided bankruptcy thanks to the Government. Piece of cake. In fact we used to play liar poker in the financial industry, it is a fun game. And by the way I live near the bull on the picture. The rendition of this laying bull is excellent. So there is hardly a more familiar story to me. Also, if you look at the building on the extreme right of the picture, at the bottom on the ground level there is a small blue curtain. Yes this is a Citibank (Citigroup ) bank. Small world.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
