Michael Lewis Quotes
Wall Street is not being made a scapegoat for this crisis: they really did this.
Lewis, Michael. Interview.
Arguably, for most of American History, most of the “smartest” people contributed to manufacturing, construction, research and development—activities that produce things that are wanted and/or needed. However, Wall Street began attracting and paying for some of the smartest people in the society, who when they engaged in finance—not only contributed less to manufacturing, but began to create highly complex financial instruments and procedures that few people could understand and with which regulators have difficulty understanding. These and the other schemes of financing have been major factors in the economic problems that have beset the economy including the meltdown of 2008 and the subsequent Great Rescission.
Sovereign credit substitution is where the government, one way or another, assumes and guarantees the debts of private corporations. This is an elegant way of saying: “taxpayer bailouts”
Economic is often called “the dismal science” as its ability to make predictions has never been very good. The Great Depression was also missed, else it would not have come as such a shock. There have been a few economists who correctly predicted these economic downturns but they generally continuously predict recessions and depressions that never happen.
Michael Monroe Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his non-fiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.
