David Edwards and Muriel Kane
The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar's 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 capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn't the first clue.
I'd never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous—which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud. Sooner rather than later, there would come a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with other people's money, would be expelled from finance.
When I sat down to write my account of the experience in 1989—Liar's Poker, it was called—it was in the spirit of a young man who thought he was getting out while the getting was good. I was merely scribbling down a message on my way out and stuffing it into a bottle for those who would pass through these parts in the far distant future.
When I sat down to write my account of the experience in 1989—Liar's Poker, it was called—it was in the spirit of a young man who thought he was getting out while the getting was good. I was merely scribbling down a message on my way out and stuffing it into a bottle for those who would pass through these parts in the far distant future.
Brainiacs and financial gurus are cautiously telling me what's gone wrong in banking, investment banking and insurance companies. They never fail to begin with "It's very complicated". When they explain it to you they do so in low voices as if you shouldn't be hearing this. They say it as slowly as possible as if this allows "idiot non financial types" their best chance for comprehending what they view as the seriously difficult subject of "Financial Markets" They expect you to react with the proper amount of awe due any discussion of "Financial Markets" and "Financial Instruments:" Then, you are to respond and the only proper response, the only response that will satisfy your "financial friend" is the "Lawn Mower Man" response. In a hushed but awakened voice, a tone that indicates that you've just absorbed all the knowledge in the world, you must say "I never knew it would be so complex". So I did. 
"She has three voice cycles, and moms shopping would go, 'Oh how precious!' " Huebner said. "I would buy her right then until I got her home and my baby kicked her legs and then it says, 'Islam is the light.'"
A report from the chaotic postfeminist dating scene, where only the strong survive
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