How the Financial Crisis Broke Wall Street

Against the Rules: The Big Short Companion

Pushkin Industries

Sports, Society & Culture, Business

4.6 • 9.8K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To make sense of Wall Street’s hangover from the crash described in The Big Short, Michael Lewis calls up Matt Levine. Levine is author of the Money Stuff newsletter for Bloomberg Opinion and co-host of a podcast by the same name. He’s also a former investment banker who was working at Goldman Sachs during the market crisis of 2008. He and Lewis talk about Bitcoin, bank regulation, and new forms of risk-taking — all ways Wall Street has changed since the crisis.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:04.0	Hi, I'm Adam Grant, host of the podcast Rethinking, a show where I talk to some of today's
0:08.7	greatest thinkers about the unconventional ways they see the world.
0:12.3	On rethinking, you'll get surprising insights from scientists, leaders, artists, and more.
0:17.5	People like Reese Witherspoon, Malcolm Gladwell, and Yo-Yo Ma.
0:21.4	Hear lessons to help you find success at work, build better relationships, and more.
0:26.2	Find rethinking wherever you get your podcasts.
0:32.2	Pushkin.
0:43.9	Thank you. Pushkin. I'm Michael Lewis.
0:45.5	And I'm Lydia Jean-Cott.
0:46.8	This is the Big Short Companion podcast on Against the Rules.
0:50.3	And today's episode is all about the financial consequences of the 2008 recession.
0:58.0	Michael, when you said you wanted to do this episode, what consequences were you thinking about?
1:02.6	You know, the things, all kinds of things sort of popped to mind when you look at how Wall Street is now versus how Wall Street was in, say, 2007, you can see that, like,
1:13.1	the big investment banks, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs are far or less prestigious to work for.
1:18.2	They're not getting first cut of the college graduates.
1:21.7	You can see that a whole new set of institutions, Jane Street, Citadel, jump trading,
1:27.1	have arisen to take risk that
1:30.0	previously were in the investment banks. It's like the risk. Who gets to take the risk has changed?
1:35.5	And the banks just generally have been removed from the process. That's like one thing.
1:41.2	Another thing is like Bitcoin is a response or it seems to have been a
	...

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