A short interview with Michael Lewis about the book he just edited, Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity. In compiling the stories, Lewis was surprised at how little good writing he could find about upcoming financial hard times.
How little there was worth reprinting. I had six interns digging up all kinds of stuff, and I looked at 20 times the amount of material that appeared in the book. I assumed there would be lots of stories predicting each panic before the panics actually struck. But there was very little. Afterwards you'd have a flurry of literary activity, and then everybody was on to the next thing. Still, there was a common thread: You were watching America's growing financial insanity.