The key dilemma around Moneyball, the book by Michael Lewis and the movie based on it (I recommend both), is pretty simple.
The New York Yankees had a payroll of $126 million in 2002. The Oakland A’s had a payroll of only $40 million. How does an underfunded, outgunned outfit like the A’s compete with the Yankees? As A’s General Manager Billy Beane puts it in the movie: “There are rich teams, and there are poor teams. Then there’s 50 feet of crap. And then there’s us.” - in Daily Reckoning
2.16.2012
2.15.2012
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
"In his book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis profiles the Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane, as he stole unseen stars from wealthier teams by exploiting baseball’s prejudices; unlike the rest of baseball, Beane wasn’t interested in good looking athletic players who either hit homeruns or struck out nobly, but in smart players who got on base. In The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Lewis uses the inspiring rags-to-riches story of a poor homeless African-American high school player to explain how football strategy and tactics have evolved over the years." - in CNN Blog
1.19.2012
The Big Interview: Is the United States a Third World Nation?
Michael Lewis, author of the new book "Boomerang," says the United States and many European nations suffered a moral failure that led to economic collapse. Lewis insists that the U.S. economic situation will get much worse before it gets better.
1.03.2012
Quote Of The Day
´You can tell a lot about a country by observing how much better they treat themselves than foreigners at the point of entry.` - Michael Lewis
1.02.2012
12.28.2011
12.15.2011
How You Measured Success In New Orleans
"What was important inside New Orleans was who your mama was, what carnival organisation you belonged to, where you went to school. It wasn't that there was an attitude that was hostile to success; it was that success was family; it was, "Did you give pleasure to people?" It was just kind of being. It wasn't achieving." - in smh.com.au
12.05.2011
Looming Threats
We have identified two looming threats:
The first is the shifting relationship between ambitious young people and money. There’s a reason the Lower 99 currently lack leadership: Anyone with the ability to organize large numbers of unsuccessful people has been diverted into Wall Street jobs, mainly in the analyst programs at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Those jobs no longer exist, at least not in the quantities sufficient to distract an entire generation from examining the meaning of their lives.
Our Wall Street friends, wounded and weakened, can no longer pick up the tab for sucking the idealism out of America’s youth. But if not them, who? We on the committee are resigned to all elite universities becoming breeding grounds for insurrection, with the possible exception of Princeton.
The second threat is in the unstable mental pictures used by Lower 99ers to understand their economic lives. (We have found that they think in pictures.)
For many years the less viable among us have soothed themselves with metaphors of growth and abundance: rising tides, expanding pies, trickling down. A dollar in our pocket they viewed hopefully, as, perhaps, a few pennies in theirs. They appear to have switched this out of their minds for a new picture, of a life raft with shrinking provisions. A dollar in our pockets they now view as a dollar from theirs. Fearing for their lives, the Lower 99 will surely become ever more desperate and troublesome. Complaints from our membership about their personal behavior are already running at post-French Revolutionary highs.
We on the strategy committee see these developments as inexorable historical forces. The Lower 99 is a ticking bomb that can’t be defused. They may be occasionally distracted by, say, a winning lottery ticket. (And we have sent out the word to the hedge fund community to cease their purchases of such tickets.) They may turn their anger on others -- immigrants for instance, or the federal government -- and we can encourage them to do so. They may even be frightened into momentary submission. (We’re long pepper spray.) - in Bloomberg
The first is the shifting relationship between ambitious young people and money. There’s a reason the Lower 99 currently lack leadership: Anyone with the ability to organize large numbers of unsuccessful people has been diverted into Wall Street jobs, mainly in the analyst programs at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Those jobs no longer exist, at least not in the quantities sufficient to distract an entire generation from examining the meaning of their lives.
Our Wall Street friends, wounded and weakened, can no longer pick up the tab for sucking the idealism out of America’s youth. But if not them, who? We on the committee are resigned to all elite universities becoming breeding grounds for insurrection, with the possible exception of Princeton.
The second threat is in the unstable mental pictures used by Lower 99ers to understand their economic lives. (We have found that they think in pictures.)
For many years the less viable among us have soothed themselves with metaphors of growth and abundance: rising tides, expanding pies, trickling down. A dollar in our pocket they viewed hopefully, as, perhaps, a few pennies in theirs. They appear to have switched this out of their minds for a new picture, of a life raft with shrinking provisions. A dollar in our pockets they now view as a dollar from theirs. Fearing for their lives, the Lower 99 will surely become ever more desperate and troublesome. Complaints from our membership about their personal behavior are already running at post-French Revolutionary highs.
We on the strategy committee see these developments as inexorable historical forces. The Lower 99 is a ticking bomb that can’t be defused. They may be occasionally distracted by, say, a winning lottery ticket. (And we have sent out the word to the hedge fund community to cease their purchases of such tickets.) They may turn their anger on others -- immigrants for instance, or the federal government -- and we can encourage them to do so. They may even be frightened into momentary submission. (We’re long pepper spray.) - in Bloomberg
11.30.2011
Credit Agencies, An Excerpt From The Big Short
To judge from their behavior, all the rating agencies worried about was maximizing the number of deals they rated for Wall Street investment banks, and the fees they collected from them.
Moody’s once a private company, had gone public in 2000. Since then its revenues had boomed, from 800 million dollars in 2001 to 2.01 billion dollars in 2006. Some huge percentage of the increase –more than half, certainly, but exactly how much more than half they declined to tell Eisman –flowed from the arcane end of the home finance sector, known as structured finance.
The surest way to attract structured finance business was to accept the assumptions of the structured finance industry. “We asked everyone the same two questions,” said Vinny. “What is your assumption about home prices, and what is your assumption about loan losses.” Both rating agencies said they expected home prices to rise and loan losses to be around 5 percent – which, if true, meant that even the lowest-rated triple-B, subprime mortgage bonds crafted from them were money -good.” it was like everyone had agreed in advance that five percent was the number,” said Eisman. “They all said five percent. It was a party and there was a party line.” - an excerpt from the “Big Short”
Moody’s once a private company, had gone public in 2000. Since then its revenues had boomed, from 800 million dollars in 2001 to 2.01 billion dollars in 2006. Some huge percentage of the increase –more than half, certainly, but exactly how much more than half they declined to tell Eisman –flowed from the arcane end of the home finance sector, known as structured finance.
The surest way to attract structured finance business was to accept the assumptions of the structured finance industry. “We asked everyone the same two questions,” said Vinny. “What is your assumption about home prices, and what is your assumption about loan losses.” Both rating agencies said they expected home prices to rise and loan losses to be around 5 percent – which, if true, meant that even the lowest-rated triple-B, subprime mortgage bonds crafted from them were money -good.” it was like everyone had agreed in advance that five percent was the number,” said Eisman. “They all said five percent. It was a party and there was a party line.” - an excerpt from the “Big Short”
11.25.2011
"The Valley Girl Show" Interview with Bestselling Writer Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis on the Valley Girl Show.
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