MetaFilter posts tagged with michaellewis

The Man Who Crashed the World

manny_calavera — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:05:20 -0800

Michael Lewis going after Joseph Cassano Trying to find out what happened to the AIG guys who crashed the system. liddy: I’m just not going to do that, sir, because that will provide—that’ll be the—that could be a list of people that we could do—individuals who want to do damage to them could do that. It’s just not … grayson: Not a single one. You’re talking about a group, a small group of people who caused your company to lose $100 billion, as you sit here today, you can’t give me one single name. liddy: The single name I would give you is Joseph Cassano, who ran … grayson: Well, listen, these same people could now be working right now today at Citibank. Is it more important to protect them, the ones who caused the $100 billion loss, or protect us? Which is more important to you right now?

Fire Joe Morgan, Hire Demetri Martin

ORthey — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:07:57 -0800

Demetri Martin cast in Steven Soderbergh's Moneyball. An adaptation of Michael Lewis' controversial and influential 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, the film will begin shooting in June and will star Brad Pitt as Oakland Athletics' General Manager Billy Beane, Martin as Beane's then-assistant GM Paul DePodesta, and former major leaguers Scott Hatteberg and David Justice as themselves. The screenplay is currently undergoing a rewrite by Steven Zaillian (writer of Schindler's List, Gangs of New York, and others). Martin, a stand-up comedian discussed before on MeFi, has also been cast in Ang Lee's upcoming Taking Woodstock. Moneyball the book is the story of how Beane found innovative ways of keeping the A's, a small-market team with a small payroll, competitive in a league with no salary cap by using statistical data studies known as sabermetrics and finding statistics and players undervalued in the current market. Frequently misunderstood (most famously by analyist and Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan, who refuses to read the book and for a long time believed it was written by Beane himself), Moneyball challenged conventional baseball wisdom and, drawing largely upon the work of Bill James, revolutionized the sport.

If X is Kobe Bryant and Y is the ball...

jourman2 — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:20:45 -0800

The selfless NBA stats geek, by Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis previously on mefi Battier, even as a teenager, was as shrewd as he was disciplined. The minute he figured out where he was headed, he called a sensational high-school power forward in Peekskill, N.Y., named Elton Brand — and talked him into joining him at Duke. (Brand now plays for the Philadelphia 76ers.) “I thought he’d be the first black president,” Wetzel says. “He was Barack Obama before Barack Obama.” Last July, as we sat in the library of the Detroit Country Day School, watching, or trying to watch, his March 2008 performance against Kobe Bryant, Battier was much happier instead talking about Obama, both of whose books he had read. (“The first was better than the second,” he said.) He said he hated watching himself play, then proved it by refusing to watch himself play. My every attempt to draw his attention to the action on the video monitor was met by some distraction.

The Nutcracker Suite

jonson — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:46:23 -0800

Michael Lewis gets a vasectomy.

This is what happens when you lend money to poor people.

GrammarMoses — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 06:22:31 -0800

"I had no idea how my open-handedness could be made to look, after the fact. At the time I bought the subprime portfolio I thought: This is sort of like my way of giving something back. I didn't expect a profile in Philanthropy Today or anything like that. I mean, I bought at a discount. But I thought people would admire the Wall Street big shot who found a way to help the little guy. Sort of like a money doctor helping a sick person. Then the little guy wheels around and gives me this financial enema. And I'm the one who gets crap in the papers!" -- Michael Lewis on the subprime meltdown

$16.5 Billion. That's with a B as in booyah!

blue mustard — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 12:19:27 -0800

It's Wall Street bonus season. And, as Henry Blodget writes, the folks who have "the good fortune of working in a hot industry in a favorable market environment" are doing extremely well this year. Notably, Goldman Sachs is breaking records with a $16.5 billion bonus pool. That is roughly $622,000 per employee but some employees do better than others: "[Goldman CEO] Lloyd Blankfein, for one, will probably earn a measly $50 million (loser), whereas Morgan Sze (big man on campus), head of GS's principal strategies group in Hong Kong will go home with a check around twice that." Anyway, whether you're a $120K secretary or a $100M trader, author Michael Lewis has some some tongue-in-cheek advice for dealing with poorer relations.

One youth saved

caddis — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 04:50:32 -0800

The Ballad of Big Mike. “Where are you going?” he asked. “To basketball practice,” Michael said. “Michael, you don’t have basketball practice,” Sean said. “I know,” the boy said. “But they got heat there.” Sean didn’t understand that one. “It’s nice and warm in that gym,” the boy said. As they drove off, Sean looked over and saw tears streaming down Leigh Anne’s face. And he thought, Uh-oh, my wife’s about to take over. ... “One night it wasn’t going so well, and I got frustrated,” Mitchell says, “and he said to me, ‘Miss Sue, you have to remember I’ve only been going to school for two years.”’

On the internet, no one knows you're not a lawyer

euphorb — Thu, 13 Jan 2005 21:25:46 -0800

R.I.P. LawGuy1975 (Realvideo interview)

palegirl — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 13:42:42 -0800

from this weeks nyt mag: a fantastic article by the always-excellent michael lewis: Jonathan Lebed: Stock Manipulator, S.E.C. Nemesis -- and 15

aaron — Sat, 12 Aug 2000 22:29:25 -0800

Three good pieces from the Sunday Times: New York as viewed through foreign tourist guidebooks (big surprise, the French books are the ones that spend the most time pointing out American inferiority). Jerry Nachman on journalists' overwhelmingly one-sided ideology and their rapidly-decreasing ability to hide it. And Michael Lewis on how TiVo and Replay are going to destroy television as we know it, eek! (And don't miss the videos showing how they blew up the TVs and Kellogg's boxes to get the photographs that accompany the article.)

I don't think the Nachman link will live beyond 11 pm Eastern on Sunday; I couldn't find a longer-lasting link to it. I guess opinion pieces aren't important to the Times.