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| English: , author of the best-sellers Moneyball, The New, New Thing, Liar's Poker, and others at a Hudson Union Society event in 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
From Denny: This author decided to go on a walkabout. Actually, Michael Lewis went on a financial disaster tour of several European countries: Iceland, Ireland, Greece and Germany.
He wanted to view the global financial disaster through the prism of each culture and what a view he got. (He is also the author of Moneyball that was recently made into a movie.)
In Iceland he discovered that up until seven years ago the only way to make money in Iceland was fishing. But, seven years ago," the men literally walked off the fishing boats and walked into the banks deciding to become currency traders in a matter of days."
Even their president went around the world crowing about how Icelanders were natural investment bankers. Yeah? Where had that talent been hiding for the past 1,000 years? The country is only the size of Peoria, Illinois with a population of 300,000.
Like typical men they told the women they knew what they were doing and not to question them. Who needs directions, right? They took three small Icelandic banks and morphed them into global banks inside five short years. They amassed $140 billion. Looked good, right?
