Michael Lewis Quote

It was in Las Vegas that Eisman and his associates’ attitude toward the U.S. bond market hardened into something like its final shape. As Vinny put it, That was the moment when we said, ‘Holy shit, this isn’t just credit. This is a fictitious Ponzi scheme.’ In Vegas the question lingering at the back of their minds ceased to be, Do these bond market people know something we do not? It was replaced by, Do they deserve merely to be fired, or should they be put in jail? Are they delusional, or do they know what they’re doing? Danny thought that the vast majority of the people in the industry were blinded by their interests and failed to see the risks they had created. Vinny, always darker, said, There were more morons than crooks, but the crooks were higher up.

Michael Lewis

It was in Las Vegas that Eisman and his associates’ attitude toward the U.S. bond market hardened into something like its final shape. As Vinny put it, That was the moment when we said, ‘Holy shit, this isn’t just credit. This is a fictitious Ponzi scheme.’ In Vegas the question lingering at the back of their minds ceased to be, Do these bond market people know something we do not? It was replaced by, Do they deserve merely to be fired, or should they be put in jail? Are they delusional, or do they know what they’re doing? Danny thought that the vast majority of the people in the industry were blinded by their interests and failed to see the risks they had created. Vinny, always darker, said, There were more morons than crooks, but the crooks were higher up.

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About Michael Lewis

Michael Monroe Lewis (born October 15, 1960) 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 nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.
Lewis was born in New Orleans and attended Princeton University, from which he graduated with a degree in art history. After attending the London School of Economics, he began a career on Wall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book, Liar's Poker (1989). Fourteen years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), in which he investigated the success of the Oakland Athletics baseball team and their general manager Billy Beane. His 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film, The Blind Side (2009). In 2010, he released The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation of Moneyball was released in 2011, followed by The Big Short in 2015.
Lewis's books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and several have reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list, including his most recent book, Going Infinite (2023).