Listen to debate over financial reform on Capitol Hill for any length of time and you might think lawmakers were being paid to plug The Big Short, by Michael Lewis. They're not; they just love the way the book explains the financial meltdown and how a handful of investors made a mint on the subprime collapse. Politico counts 15 public mentions of it in hearings or news conferences. (Chris Dodd: "Read this new book, The Big Short." Harry Reid: “I recommend everyone within the sound of my voice to read the book.”)
Lewis, in fact, has met with both House Republicans and House Democrats to talk about his work. “I tell them all the same thing: ‘I’m not Jesus, I’m Brian,’” he says, referring to the Monty Python character mistaken for the son of God. "It makes you nervous, because I don’t think of myself as advising people who are actually going to change things.” Still, that didn't stop from writing a tongue-in-cheek New York Times op-ed advising Wall Street titans on how to gut reform.
(More The Big Short stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
