High finance, low tricks

It amazes me, simply amazes me, that journalists aren’t all over these stories. Doesn’t it amaze you too?’

I’m in a plush room in a swanky central London hotel, in conversation with Michael Lewis. He is all fired up, leaning forward as he perches on the hard edge of the cushion-strewn sofa. He oozes incredulity, palms upward, shoulders raised.

‘I’m not saying there aren’t good financial journalists,’ he concedes. But the qualification seems half-hearted — and is quickly reversed. ‘The Wall Street Journal is a much worse newspaper than it was 20 years ago,’ he asserts, taking aim at the bible of US high finance. ‘The news side of the paper has the fingerprints of the finance industry all over it’.

Lewis broadens his critique to the media as a whole. ‘We are underserved by critical, knowledge-able financial journalists who don’t have any fear whatsoever of what their subjects think of them.’ He winces as he speaks, as if pained by his own words.

Michael Lewis is, by a long way, the most important financial writer alive today — not just in his native America, but worldwide. At a time when public confidence in Wall Street and the City is at rock-bottom, his views pack a mighty punch. Lewis is in London to talk about his 2010 bestseller, The Big Short — a penetrating account of the build-up of the western world’s housing and credit bubble during the 2000s. The Oscar-nominated film version of the book has its UK premiere this week.

Described by Reuters as ‘probably the best single piece of financial journalism ever written’, The Big Short analysed how the international banking system came off the rails, with devastating consequences for the global economy, due to the crass, immoral behaviour of those running some of the world’s biggest banks.

Well aware of the potential cultural and political impact of a Hollywood movie (‘a lot more powerful than a mere book’), Lewis states his views on the financial reforms since the 2008 financial crisis.