How London Was Chaged By Emulating Wall Street

Michael Lewis tells a great story even when he is reviewing a book written by another person.  This is a review of a book by an English writer who took a unique approach to describing how London was changed by the transformation of the City of London into its version of Wall Street.  The story is about a few individuals who live on a single street in London.  One of them is a banker who has "earned" a million dollar bonus, but can't pay his bills because his wife, who seems to hate him, spends more than he is paid.  Vast sums of money have caused half of the graduates from Oxford and Cambridge to forget what they were taught about how to live in college.  The smell of money is in the air and it seems better to chase after it than to do something that might be more worthwhile.

Michael Lewis remembers what London was like when he was there in the 1980's.  He describes it as a dreary place.  The new London that he describes is as shallow as Wall Street.  The pursuit of money is an end in itself.  One would think that it would inspire a revolt, but there is little outrage.  He suggests that turning back to the dreary socialist London of the 1980's is not an attractive alternative to the Americanization of London either.  Unfortunately, there is not a compelling vision of a future that might replace both of them.