Our friend Paul has sent over an article by Michael Lewis (The End, Portfolio [December 2008]) on Wall Street that he terms the "best article written on the financial crisis so far." It's and entertaining and well-written article a handful of financial analysts who predicted the subprime crisis. Like a lot of what has happened in the Boy Emperor's reign, the is a pronounced Emperor's-new-clothes aspect to this story. The analysts that Lewis profiles made no secret of what they discovered and at "industry" gatherings made no secret of their contempt for those engaged in planning this disaster. At times they seem somewhat boorish. Nobody seemed at all bothered. The video below is from a Google authors event that took place on September 18, 2007. It's wide-ranging and deals with his writing on sports as well as finance.
Looking for insight about the roots of the current financial disaster, we've been impressed by John Lanchester's articles in the LRB. A banker's son and a novelist, he writes with great clarity about economic matters. His article on the Northern Rock failure in Britain last year was a preview of this fall's events on Wall Street and was part of a previous post. His more recent article, "Cityphobia," LRB (23 October 2008) is a good follow-up.
He also has an interesting book review in a recent New Yorker "Melting into Air: Before the financial system went bust, it went postmodern," New Yorker (November 10, 2008) that deals with the debacle on Wall Street. There's also some New Yorker audio here.
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