“It muted the tragedy in such a way that it certainly increased the possibility of an even greater tragedy down the road”

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"CBS) If you had to pick someone to write the autopsy report on the Wall Street financial collapse 18 months ago, you couldn't do any better than Michael Lewis. He is one of the country's preeminent non-fiction writers with a knack for turning complicated, mind numbing material into fascinating yarns.

He wrote his first bestseller, "Liar's Poker," about his experiences as a young Wall Street bond trader when he was still in his 20s and has since followed up with seven more bestsellers on subjects ranging from Silicon Valley in "The New New Thing" to big time sports in "Money Ball" and "The Blind Side."

His new book, called "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine," comes out later this week and it explains how some of Wall Street's finest minds managed to destroy $1.75 trillion of wealth in the subprime mortgage markets.

'60 Minutes' and correspondent Steve Kroft spent two days debriefing Lewis at his home in California."



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"And really what's going on is the people at the top of firm wanna make a lot of money. And if they're gonna make a lot of money they gotta pay the people under them a lot of money," he added. "So it's a very elegant form of theft right now."


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Much more at:

March 14, 2010
Wall Street: Inside the Collapse
Author Tells "60 Minutes" What Led to Wall Street Collapse and Who Predicted It

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