Micheal Lewis on THE REAL LESSONS from Subprime

Posted by Howard
on September 5th, 2007

My Fave-

So right after the Bear Stearns funds blew up, I had a thought: This is what happens when you lend money to poor people.

Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing personally against the poor. To my knowledge, I have nothing personally to do with the poor at all. It’s not personal when a guy cuts your grass: that’s business. He does what you say, you pay him. But you don’t pay him in advance: That would be finance. And finance is one thing you should never engage in with the poor. (By poor, I mean anyone who the SEC wouldn’t allow to invest in my hedge fund.)

Also:

There’s a reason the rich aren’t getting richer as fast as they should: they keep getting tangled up with the poor. It’s unrealistic to say that Wall Street should cut itself off entirely from poor — or, if you will, “mainstream” — culture. As I say, I’ll still do business with the masses. But I’ll only engage in their finances if they can clump themselves together into a semblance of a rich person. I’ll still accept pension fund money, for example. (Nothing under $50 million, please.) And I’m willing to finance the purchase of entire companies staffed basically with poor people. I did deals with Milken, before they broke him. I own some Blackstone. (Hang tough, Steve!)

But never again will I go one-on-one again with poor people. They’re sharks.

UPDATE – FLY chimes in on his stance on the Poor: OY!

So, I understand 7 million people are going to lose their homes this year. Fuck ‘em. I’m sure they can go back to that one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, effectively alleviating some of the traffic problems in the “well-to-do” area’s.

Look, everyone likes to talk about “the poor” like it’s some sort of problem. The only problem is their sub-par DNA, coupled with their inability to “bank coin” in stocks like RIMM, LNN or maybe even iiG (we’ll see tomorrow).

In short, being a former “poor person,” I can honestly say, from deep down, fuck the poor adults, but feed the kids.

After all, we shouldn’t punish the children because their parents are fucking hobo, Gov’t cheese eating losers.

Fly for President, 2008

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