The Money Culture
by Michael Lewis
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael LewisEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1992-10-01
ISBN: 0140173188
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of The Money Culture
Book Review: How America became a speculator economy
Summary: 4 Stars
Lewis has done an excellent job in this book .The conclusions are as relevant today(2008) as they were when the book was written in 1991.Only the cast of characters has changed.Lewis demonstrates that " ...success was money,and money was made with debt,tax games,,paper shuffling,and arrogance.The people listened.And an insidious side effect of the chrome-plated Reagan boom may yet to be fully realized :the average American has been left with a whole new notion of how to succeed ".(1991,p.135).Lewis's prediction has been verified consistently over the last 17 years .Americans now seek to live based on generating profits without production.The average American has been transformed into a housing/stock market speculator who thought that one could live on the equity that he/she could effortlessly cash out of the supposedly ever rising value of their homes and stocks.Homes were transformed into a financial asset or piggy bank that would fund the good life forever .Lewis essentially breaks up the book into a series of chapters that concentrates on discussing the individuals who helped create the speculator view of life.Lewis covers Ivan Boesky,Michael Milken,Henry Kravis,Leona Helmsley,Lousis Rukeyser,T Boone Pickens,etc.Lewis could have titled the book as " The Wall Street Crowd ".
There is one substantial flaw in the book.Lewis apparently accepts the badly flawed claims of Burton Malkiel.Supposedly," Malkiel first demonstrated the statistical truth of what he called "the narrow form " of random walk ... "(1991,p152;see also p.154 where Lewis states that he sees no reason not to accept Malkiel's claim).Malkiel's hypothesis is that price changes over time in stock markets can be correctly modeled as being normally distributed.Unfortunately,there is not a single piece of evidence supporting this claim.Benoit Mandelbrot has demonstrated continuously,since the late 1950's,that the time series data fits the Cauchy or Power Law Distibutions.The data does not come close to being either normally distributed or " approximately " normally distributed.You will not see a single goodness of fit test referenced in any edition of Malkiel's book.The Normal distribution can't explain the boom-bust nature of financial capitalism.The Cauchy or Power Law distributions explain the facts perfectly.
Summary of The Money Culture
The author of the best-selling Liar's Poker offers a witty, trenchant analysis of the world of high finance in the 1980s and the cult of wealth that produced such moguls as Michael Milken and Donald Trump. Reprint.Business Books
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