Will this affect things with a Gold Standard on that . First what force is off the Gold Standard supposedly . We were not playing by the rules with the Bretton Woods system at 35 an ounce. Nixon was worried about reelection in the economy was not responding quickly enough so the theory was out there it would boost the economy in for one year they put in wage price controls then the economy crashed so it was bad intellectual theory but not their real crisis any of the economic problems were small compared to the crisis we had in the past there was no sensible reason to do its with that industrial use of gold it is a small fraction and reusing less we dont use it anymore for fillings once upon a time we had gold and silver. So for most gold is for store of value and ornament but nothing to do say we need all 5. 5 billion dances for industrial use it is too valuable to use we found cheaper and better ways to fix our teeth. Any other questions . If not, thank you very much and we will go to the book signing. Thank thank you for coming i want to start by explaining why i have the pleasure to interview michael is and i would direct your attention to the dust jacket, the back and there is a blurb that says i read Michael Willis is a reason to watch tiger woods i will never play like that but it is good to be reminded what books like a genius. [laughter] so who is more shameless . Me for writing that or you for putting that on your book. [laughter] i just stopped them from putting its in an advertisement there wearing out. So there is a place for hyperbole i believe it is the back jacket of a book. [laughter] i have a grand unified theory and i thought we would start their. In to see if you get the theory and in the preamble is principally you are a moralist. You are someone who explores deeply moral themes id as per fiber like 2. 0 that in five of your best selling books are essentially biblical allegory is. Let see if you can guess. [laughter] it is very funny that you say this. Get it out there. It is what biblical story . [laughter] daniel and though lyons vendor rewired daniel in the u. Are beset by a large piece that you hold at bay. Duh. [laughter] money ball . David and goliath that is the easy one. [laughter] the blind side is the good samaritan. That is very true. Is the same story. [laughter] big short know was hour. [laughter] what did they do . They take refuge against the coming storm to build themselves a financial arc. Perfect. It is the most perfect political thought allegory of all jesus in the money temple. We have turned into a den of thieves. [applause] i look at where is that epigraph . We could not find it. But why dont i feel better understood . But it is okay. You are not disputing there is the deeply moral center . In this case it is more moralistic. But it is hard without filtering it through. But on the surface it is more with the book they and the character. But in this case you have a canadian who walks into American Finance but is appalled because he is canadian. [laughter] but so clearly not just appalled but such a clear sense of right and wrong. And there is more moral ambiguity about them. I will grant that but surely you were not saying, i find thats a moral center in think of the characters of those five books. It is absolutely true. They had a moral position what does he need . We will get to that in a moment. [laughter] buddy has a moral position that the money ball is a privilege on one level. I think it is a book about value. Hint how difficult the markets are to place a value on the human being. The billy dee was like that. To have of book about war but he was not thinking right or wrong in a moral way but my math is better than your mouth. There is not a moral dimension to someone that says we have misunderstood the true value in the world . I say that. He doesnt. [laughter] it is true but what causes you to type the words out in the first place like something is wrong . You have the us since that feels at least to you and that is with a moral concern is that is fair . You think i am . Heavily. Really . But i want 2. 0 to go back to list them and brad however you pronounce his last name, there is a Common Thread that runs through them. Dont you think . We met every one of those people have opposition but everybody has a moral position even by default. Solyndra goes into finance even after he abandons medicine because i care about people but not really. [laughter] but to be so indifferent he takes refuge in numbers. That is a moral position that not a moralistic character. But i thought what was so moving i thought the story to be very moving. Me to. Let me interrupt you im trying to find true is. [laughter] truce. But it is true that i have no interest to write a book of less i feel something so i write about very dry things of baseball statistics highfrequency trading who cares . If you told me that if all i knew the stock market was raped him here is how you could explain to the world that nobody else knows i dont care that much. A little bit and not enough to write about it. That what i care about is this character walks into this world to discover it is fake and how he behaves once he has the understanding. It is the moral choices no question. The batting cages my emotions. So i have to feel something. Also i was sitting there fit i realized this with my seven yearold on my lap watching 60 minutes about the story to sundays ago. I was crying and tears are down my face and i was embarrassed but i could see the character on the screen displayed so clearly in the character was moving. So being moved does cause me to put effort. Were you more moved than the previous heroes . I find all of them kind of moving. Id like parade people and a lot of my characters are brave. I will say what he has done is peculiar brave and he has gone to war if it in the way billy dean did not do it and tell of but cannot. So i find him because by nature he is not a troublemaker or someone hugos out of his way to antagonize the he was forced by circumstances to make choices that were unnatural twostep outside the system he was quite comfortable to a moral reaction so what i had in mind i had a strange feeling i read the book digest wrote. What does this remind me of . Here i have the character to unleashed war triggered so a the middleman and the investors that now he was in the middle and very short and in some ways and i thought i just wrote board of the rings. I think of him as. And i find his bravery. So the most dramatic story of the new testament and you think of lord of the rings. [laughter] you were raised with religion. Have much career aspirations for your vision. I think florida of the rings is pretty terrific. So what do these people have been a common . They are troublemakers they are disruptive it is all useful to describe the environment. What is it that is drawn to that specific profile . You do not remember when there was six people in barnes noble is a new york can the blindside came out in as radical hostility to the world around him you could not understand how i was raised. [laughter] so where does this hidden neurosis come from . In i dont know if i answered you properly but maybe in some way i am wired but i do think it helps me as a writer that i grew up in the world that i loved it was outside that it was hostile and would not survive so they were crumbling before my eyes so i could see my fathers way of life was unsustainable. That probably helped. What do you mean . Club was unsustainable . Not to care very much what you did for a living. With your achievements as opposed your personal relationships from your family. It was not a success culture. People were in disrepair indifferent to. But it was a gift for creating wonderful moments. But it was not successful but it was failed and you could see that even the things that you loved were not sustainable. So that makes you question success when at a very deep emotional level is by the standards of the world a failure. That is something to do how i approach subjects but i dont know how much that maybe the answer is i am lazy and it is easier to write a story about a disruptive person than think through the idea very clearly. We had this conversation before. So touche tie them together by a kid you not on a coat of arms passed down from generation to generation to as little as possible into which unwillingly. [laughter] it is better to receive us light reprimand they and to perform an arduous task. [laughter] and i thought that was serious. That makes total sense to me. So with my right teen life to be influenced. I dont look for trouble but i look for things that i can do without too much trouble speaking you make a relies to make no sense whatsoever right now . [laughter] first of all, your insanely prolific. It is in charge. [laughter] this does not make me feel better. But once i find a story that engages me, i have to spend time with them which might be onerous but if that situation takes care of itself. So maybe given in my proclivities it is the path of least resistance. Which is the hardest to write . Probably that is a good way to judge them. Like you have to have a degree of difficulty with the execution. That i had as a character that was uncomfortable to be with the minute you get settled he gets up and settled it is the culture of silicon valley. Id he doesnt form attachments. So that was probably the hardest. So they had these details. It is basically impossible to describe the of collateralized debt obligations the matter what you do the best that you hope for is to fool people to think that they understand. [laughter] said day tell people they understood. So you have to give up artfully with some things. So that is true or i hope the reader did not want to know any more. [laughter] but i find the hard part is structured once you find a way it can almost right itself. Which was the easiest . I was so vastly amused by myself. I write with headphones i listen to music the same song over and over on the loop because it shuts out everything else. I wrote one entire chapter to the song let it go. But to know that i laughed at my own jokes that i had never written a book in very few magazine pieces so i did not occur to me but it was just easy. But dicier the disapproval of the others a and it is not nice to get bad reviews. But beyond that of my literary life . Could you come up with something . Probably not. So yet must be this way with layers of confidence. I know i am not really that worried prettify work hard enough it will come easily. So it is problematic because writers are to be tortured and miserable and for an i am none of those. [laughter] i am very happy and more or less well adjusted and plenty rich. [laughter] so im sorry i cannot give you what you need. [laughter] to. I find this deeply refreshing. Our mutual friend, another michael told me the key to understanding is that the commencement address that you gave that princeton in several years ago from the pulpit in the church could you describe what that commencement was about . Day believe that encapsulates Something Real . So you have problems to address the undergraduates. Actually princeton is such a small world that i realized that every class gets it so i had to get it when i was graduating from princeton. And much less the speaker and i started to say that i must have sat there is accused to tell you something and i dont even remember being here so you will not remember this. And it turns out the guy whod gave this speech. [laughter] when i was a senior was in the audience he had had grandchild graduating and i got a nice note to years later to see my husband was there and he thought it was funny you did not remember what he said. [laughter] would you like to come to dinner . So we have become friends. So the theme of the speech was the people of the audience because they passed through this filter got the right grades because they deserve to be there but i knew i was there because of my father and that i did not even deserve to be there i thought it was the privilege but because they were programmed that way it was important to tell them how much luck was involved. It was not just enough to appreciate their lock. It is no way i was smuggling back into princeton is one of those ways for those elites to think about there part of the outrage is that the elites are doing the opposite is said of taking a responsibility it is good to get to know the audience. I think we are drifting left. [laughter] so it is true that this team was tied into some of my books and i munched mentioned many ball to figure on how much luck there is with a baseball career. So i was trying to bring that across. Surely you have thatll betty. [laughter] teethree think that idea has surfaced . To go back to my eighth argument there is a constant engaged with the idea of privilege about institutions i guess it pupil concern if you put it that way. But it is also about the arrogance of the rich the way ahead line did the clubs in how the your kinky is of the world were misled by there mitschers her richs. You will prove this whole conversation. [laughter] it is not a ridiculous argument but years ago when we onstage the other things that i said then was to be blindside i thought the book was and is titled remember that . Like football but it was not a book about football but charity. And. I take the book is all the forces that affect this trial that the center in the outcomes it is so serendipitous. And the football season at all comes back. What is this book about . So how does this boy going from the lease valued human being gone up planet homeless eating out of garbage cans in four years later among the most highly prized 80 yearold on the planet . And things that have happened with the football strategy but then the other floors is another that all of a sudden he had. But you are right. Like to read. [laughter] this is my anyway, that was my frustration. I worried that people think it was a football book when i felt and the few people who do read you like football, they really, really dont want a chick flick in the middle of the football book. [laughter] i liked shoving those two things together. But it did miss its market. And the movie, the movie solve that problem but if the movie had been made it would be my least redbook. I like it though. I felt very good at the end of it. [laughter] lets talk about this one. I dont know how much, i dont have a watch. Lets get to the book a little bit. Talk about the origins of this. Im guessing that, this girl out of the peaceful vanity fair on the russian highspeed rail can program, quick to summary of how this came about. The russian Computer Programmer caught my eye, this was in 2009detrigger program, a russian kid left Goldman Sachs and mailed himself of some code. A couple days later the fbi arrested him. I followed this in a newspaper. A year or so later he sentenced to seven years in jail. And so the first thing i wondered was on the back end of the financial crisis that goldman had so much to do with it, with the only person who went to jail, the person Goldman Sachs one to go to jail. Nly pern the thing that really caught my eye was that when they arrestewd buyway, wh him, the atprosecutor said that this code, he had to be denied bail, couldnt be let back on the streets because this code that he d the prosecutor said that this code, he had to be denied bail, could not be let back on the streets cause is code th had uld be used to manipulate a crashed financial market. Goldman is the right hand. I could not define it was breathtaking. Could it have it have been in worse hands already . This stuff had to do with highfrequency trading which at that time no one had ever heard of. A of. A term that was in the newspapers without much explanation. So it took me a couple of years before i came around to actually doing the story, but when i got into into it i realized that i needed a primer. I called friends on wall street, people who were investors and said, do you no anybody. Very weird leader is this canadian guide. Youre not going to believe what he we will tell you. He you. He is the only guy who is not an area 51 guy. I went to find for background, the magazine piece of his doing. Doing. A couple of days into it i realized with him that i was pleased to a knew magazine piece. The russians, there was a book. It was a question about persuading him to do it in persuading him to let me move into his life, which i did for a little more than a year. That is how it came about. About. Is it a small. , but i am wondering whether it has larger i noticed when i was reading the book that he would turn again and again to the question of as gathers his confederates around him, he returns to the question of each of these people about how they were changed. That is true. Three or four times, and i am curious, i am guessing it is for a good reason. A good reason. More broadly, i am wondering, do you think the fact that his was so much a calamity of the financial district in some ways altering the generation. I mean, is it a material effect on the way people involved in the markets thought about the dead, the. You were making by bringing it up. No, but i do think that it gave wall street coverage behaved badly for a long stretch because we were we shared an enemy. That was almost a separate. Just raise the question, why do some people in this environment decide to behave well . A lot of people do that the stock market was rigged. Why this canadian guide worldwide is positive . I think the answer is more complicated than the few that had traumatic experiences, but all of them did have this tendency to have a longview, and their lives rather than living new line looking forward to the next bonus. They were narrowly motivated by money. And that is why i kept coming back to that. Most want personal about it, only in the book for a little bit, but a the kid who works for brian josh blackburn. He was a professor in college. He walked out of college, they would not take him for a year and he ends up devoting his life to help generals map battlefields. When he comes back after ten or eight years he is traumatized because he cannot find anything in any job for his skill set. He is a technologist. He has job offers from all of five frequency trading firms, perfect for it. He finds is completely hollow and does not want to get out of bed in the morning. Gibson is feeling your purpose. They all have this need is greater than just how well they were doing at the. I wanted the reader to have some clues about why they might be that way, why they were different because this is the question. It is odd that the messenger in this case is odd, this odd, this canadian guy who really is not in the center of things in the beginning decides that the world needs no some truth and ends up essentially walking into a place with the vacuum of trust and becomes a source of trust and everybody trusts him and the power of that is incredible. Why havent . Those are were ways to prod the reader thinking along those lines. Has your own feeling of the course of two you started offonwalltrt an yuha rtuedo wi ha hve feeng out a trt finci maeteflt aryououagtoy anowe . Y. S haed wt loke eomy hasomtric when is leangalmo otrs vemed elgs at