In one obvious respect, The Big Short follows Michael Lewis’s winning formula for a blockbuster book on sports or finance: character sketches so compelling, funny, and sympathetic that he makes an arcane industry understandable by the average reader. Less recognized, but even more impressive, however, Lewis bucks the dominant trend in media coverage of the

The Senate Banking Committee long-ago proved itself to be not a truth-seeking body, but more of a combination woodshed and green room, in which distinguished financial guests get paddled mercilessly by one Party, while coiffed and flattered by the other.  Senators play at Congressional inquiry in the interest of the public good, while keeping a

One last rant, and then I’ll rest a while on MF Global and Jon Corzine.[1] Yesterday’s news[2] pointed out the regulators’ problem that only Corzine, and not his Treasury department subordinates like Edith O’Brien and Henri Steenkamp, had registered as professionals subject to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the primary regulator of a trading

You may, like me, be curious about what happened during the Great Credit Crunch.  You may, like me, have the feeling we reached a financial precipice, peeking over the edge into the abyss.  But before falling in we blacked out and woke up in the hospital, a thick IV needle in the arm, tired and