I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while, but Michael Lewis’ article in December 2008’s Portfolio about the end of Wall Street’s boom could be the best article I’ve ever read, and it’s certainly the must-read article of the year. Lewis, who chronicled the culture at Salomon Brothers leading up to the ‘87 Wall Street crash in Liar’s Poker, just does an amazing thing here, drawing a portrait of a financial system so riddled with incompetence, greed, and shortsightedness that it’s utterly staggering.  Here’s the first paragraph to get you started. 

The End

by Michael Lewis | Portfolio, December 2008

To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

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