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michael lewis

Fifth Sunflower Poker

August 7, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

I was watching a viral video of a 45th President trying to persuade journalist Jonathan Swan of an anti-virus response that was ‘better than the world’. That’s when one-time boss of Salomon Brothers came to mind. He was a securities trader who traded on your mortgage without security.

Michael Lewis wrote of John Gutfreund that it ‘was easy for Gutfreund to say money didn’t matter. He paid himself more than any chief executive on Wall Street … His attitude … towards the firm changed once he had cashed in his chips. He and others ceased to view Salomon Brothers as an instrument of wealth creation and began to treat it as an instrument of power and glory, a vast playground in which they could be the bullies.’ Liar’s Poker (1989) is still worth a read (or re-read) if you want to learn more about leaders who don’t let morals get in the way of anything.

The Ugly Library of Good Readings
Dún Laoghaire © Simon Robinson 2020
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Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: booklink, flowers, investment banking, jonathan swan, michael lewis, photos

Sorry We Missed You

March 10, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

The legacy of Ken Loach at the BBC is well demonstrated in ‘Sorry We Missed You’. ‘Up The Junction’ and ‘Cathy Come Home’ changed politics, bringing the gender issues of unwanted pregnancies and homelessness into every home in the UK. Can ‘Sorry We Missed You’ do it again for modern zero-hours contract slavery?

A family is ripped apart by cruel employment abuses, both in the private sector delivery business and also in the government’s carer business. A woman leaving the cinema commented that we should be grateful for our lives. And yet, I thought, we still want someone (else) to deliver packages on demand and someone (else) to remove the soiled clothes of the elderly. The gig economy is based on exploitation, easily sold to people who aspire to controlling their own destiny: perhaps suitable in the short term, there are longer term consequences that start with mental health issues and get worse from there.

[Read more…] about Sorry We Missed You

Filed Under: Anchoritism, ManRom2021 Tagged With: gaza, gig economy, ken loach, michael lewis, pavillion cinema, saddam hussein, wage slavery

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