{"id":71717,"date":"2023-10-12T05:31:54","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T09:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/investing\/michael-lewis-on-the-outrage-over-his-sam-bankman-fried-portrayal-it-sells-the-book\/"},"modified":"2023-10-12T05:31:57","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T09:31:57","slug":"michael-lewis-on-the-outrage-over-his-sam-bankman-fried-portrayal-it-sells-the-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ifintechworld.com\/?p=71717","title":{"rendered":"Michael Lewis on the outrage over his Sam Bankman-Fried portrayal: \u2018It sells the book\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Michael Lewis isn\u2019t the slightest bit upset at the criticism that\u2019s come his way, in light of his sympathetic portrait, expressed both in his book and in interviews, of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what it does \u2014 it sells the book,\u201d said Lewis on Wednesday, speaking in London to promote \u201cGoing Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI sold, in the first week, 100,000 copies of the book. I\u2019ve never done that before,\u201d the prolific author said at an event hosted by the Financial Times. \u201cThat sounds mercenary, but it also means you\u2019re going to have 100,000 readers. It\u2019s not going to be choked off. It will have its place in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis said comparisons made between Bankman-Fried and Ponzi-scheme operators like Bernie Madoff were off base. \u201cIt rhymes with [barred financier Michael] Milken in some ways, it rhymes with Long-Term Capital Management, there\u2019s a bit of Bernie Madoff,\u201d before saying FTX itself \u2014 without the Alameda hedge fund \u2014 was a gold mine.<\/p>\n

Granted, it was Alameda\u2019s ability to withdraw unlimited customer funds from FTX, and invest them elsewhere, that caused the problems, and possible jail time, for Bankman-Fried. \u201cI certainly don\u2019t endorse his [defense]. I just don\u2019t deal with it directly. I let other people deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

More generally, Lewis described the haphazard atmosphere at FTX. \u201cIt felt like a comedy. It felt like the beginning of \u2018Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off,\u2019 \u201d he said. Bankman-Fried was \u201ccatastrophically disorganized,\u201d losing \u2014 as in misplacing \u2014 money long before the last days of FTX, and then recovering it, he said.<\/p>\n

Bankman-Fried thrived on this kind of chaos, much to the chagrin of other FTX employees. The book has something of an Easter egg \u2014 an organizational chart on its book flap, put together not by Bankman-Fried or in fact any of its employees, but by a psychiatrist who ended up treating many of them, at FTX\u2019s home base in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n

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If there\u2019s a villain to Lewis, it\u2019s the players in the bankruptcy process, namely the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, and John Ray III, who was appointed CEO of FTX. \u201cYou can\u2019t let a law firm that was advising Sam Bankman-Fried with his applications to the [Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission] before things went bad, to not only talk him into bankruptcy, then running bankruptcy,\u201d the author said.<\/p>\n

He said it was \u201csquirrely\u201d to hire Ray to run FTX, and then for Ray to hire the firm to run the bankruptcy, which Lewis said may generate as much as $1 billion in fees.<\/p>\n

By contrast, FTX creditors could even be made whole, depending how the company\u2019s stake in the AI startup Anthropic is monetized. Of the $8.6 billion in customer deposits, already $7.3 billion has been recovered, said Lewis.<\/p>\n

Lewis said the American public has been whipped into a rage around Bankman-Fried.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a bloodlust since it all fell apart,\u201d he said. \u201cJust because there\u2019s a mob doesn\u2019t mean the mob has the wrong target, but mobs make me queasy, just generally. They\u2019re not attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewis was asked if he would visit Bankman-Fried if the latter is convicted. \u201cI will,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Lewis isn\u2019t the slightest bit upset at the criticism that\u2019s come his way, in light of his sympathetic portrait, expressed both in his book and in interviews, of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. \u201cI know what it does \u2014 it sells the book,\u201d said Lewis on Wednesday, speaking in London to promote \u201cGoing Infinite: The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[83],"class_list":["post-71717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing","tag-featured","post_format-post-format-video"],"yoast_head":"\nMichael Lewis on the outrage over his Sam Bankman-Fried portrayal: \u2018It sells the book\u2019 | iFintechWorld<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Michael Lewis isn\u2019t the slightest bit upset at the criticism that\u2019s come his 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