Michael Lewis on Wall Street’s Past and Future

Michael Lewis
Photo by Marianne Barcellona/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
March 13, 2022

I’ve been friends with Michael Lewis, the journalistic juggernaut, for many years—from our time together in the heyday of Vanity Fair, dating as far back to his previous marriage to Kate Bohner, my old Lazard colleague (who moonlighted in my recent, absurdist adventure with Carlos Watson). I admire Michael as a writer, as do so many others, for his ability to perceive things that other people don’t. While I was writing about the 2008 financial crisis from the perspective of a bank that failed (Bear Stearns, in House of Cards), and another that survived (Goldman Sachs, in Money and Power), Michael was writing about the financial crisis from the perspective of the handful of people who saw trouble brewing in the mortgage market in the years before the financial crisis and made a killing. I presume you’ve read The Big Short