Cartoon Despot

One man who takes a significant chunk of Newhouse's payroll is Michael Lewis (I read somewhere that he signed to Vanity Fair on a two-pieces-a-year contract worth six figures, which is decent work if you can get it). On the evidence of this month's Vanity Fair, he may be worth the money. His disturbing piece about the extraordinary risks taken on by AIG in the lead-up to the financial collapse introduces a new villain into our understanding of the apocalypse, a toy-throwing bully named Joe Cassano.

I particularly liked this section:

According to traders, Cassano was one of those people whose insecurities manifested themselves in a need for obedience and total control. “One day he came in and saw that someone had left the weights on the Smith machine, in the gym,” says a source in Connecticut. “He was literally walking around looking for people who looked buff, trying to find the guy who did it. He was screaming, ‘Who left the fucking weight on the fucking Smith machine? Who left the fucking weight on the fucking Smith machine?’” If that rings a bell it may be because you read The Caine Mutiny and recall Captain Queeg scouring the ship to find out who had stolen the strawberries. Even by the standards of Wall Street villains, whose character flaws wind up being exaggerated to fit the crime, Cassano was a cartoon despot.