Michael Lewis hits back: “There’s been a lot of people mouthing off without actually thinking about

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/11/michael_lewis_hits_back_at_critics_this_time_i_punched_wall_street_in_the_balls/

Michael Lewis hits back: “There’s been a lot of people mouthing off without actually thinking about the book”



Michael Lewis sits down for lunch at the Claremont Hotel in Oakland, Calif., looking like a man who is well-satisfied with the state of his current affairs. It’s easy to understand why. Lewis has an impressive publishing history, dating back to “Liar’s Poker” in 1989 and including “Moneyball,” “The Blind Side” and “The Big Short.” But right off the bat he tells me that that in its very first week, his new book, “Flash Boys,” has already sold more than 130,000 copies. That’s more than twice the sales, he says, of his previous high mark, “The Big Short.”

It’s the “biggest week in the history of my publishing firm,” he boasts.

Oh, and during that same week the FBI, the New York state attorney general’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice all coincidentally announced investigations into the potential improprieties and fraud associated with the topic of Lewis’ book, “high-frequency trading.” When Michael Lewis appears on “60 Minutes” and declares that the U.S. stock market “is rigged,” people pay attention.

Sure, there’s been a lot of “noise” around “Flash Boys,” a lot of chatter out there on the Internet both from name-brand journalists and people you’ve never heard of, picking nits and ankle-biting. Lewis has been accused of acting as a shill for big investors, of sensationalism, of getting his facts wrong.

“There’s been a lot of people mouthing off without actually thinking about the book,” says Lewis. Yes, he may have gotten a few facts wrong: “It’s impossible to write 100,000 words, and not make mistakes.” Anything substantive will be corrected for the next edition, but none of it, he says — and for a moment his bonhomie becomes icy — “will have any effect on the truth of the overall story, at all.”