'The End' by Michael Lewis December 2008 Issue
"The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liars Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong."
"To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capitalto decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadnt the first clue...."
"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 theyd 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 didnt expect was that any future reader would look on my experience and say, How quaint."
The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com
"The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liars Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong."
"To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capitalto decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadnt the first clue...."
"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 theyd 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 didnt expect was that any future reader would look on my experience and say, How quaint."
The End of Wall Street's Boom - National Business News - Portfolio.com
