High finance, low tricks

It amazes me, simply amazes me, that journalists aren’t all over these stories. Doesn’t it amaze you too?’

I’m in a plush room in a swanky central London hotel, in conversation with Michael Lewis. He is all fired up, leaning forward as he perches on the hard edge of the cushion-strewn sofa. He oozes incredulity, palms upward, shoulders raised.

‘I’m not saying there aren’t good financial journalists,’ he concedes. But the qualification seems half-hearted — and is quickly reversed. ‘The Wall Street Journal is a much worse newspaper than it was 20 years ago,’ he asserts, taking aim at the bible of US high finance. ‘The news side of the paper has the fingerprints of the finance industry all over it’.

Lewis broadens his critique to the media as a whole. ‘We are underserved by critical, knowledge-able financial journalists who don’t have any fear whatsoever of what their subjects think of them.’ He winces as he speaks, as if pained by his own words.