The bit about Alameda being the only account allowed to run a negative balance is in the book. There's a whole section on it. It's kind of waved away, though, as being needed for market-making in the early days when volume was thin. But, of course that was never "fixed."

The book really seems to go out of its way to paint the collapse as a bunch of super smart kids getting in way over their heads rather than fraud.

Meaning, it harps on there being "no adults in the room", how SBF played video games while talking to people and never seemed to be paying attention, how the guy in charge of figuring out what happened to the money after the collapse came off like an amateur archeologist getting everything wrong based on the accounting artifacts because he lacked the imagination to understand the ridiculous way things "really" went down. The list goes on.

Michael Lewis's book is such an embarrassment to him that it may permanently ruin his reputation. It seems he was completely taken in by Sam Bankman-Fried.

> Michael Lewis's book is such an embarrassment to him that it may permanently ruin his reputation. It seems he was completely taken in by Sam Bankman-Fried

I doubt it will have any effect on his reputation at all.

He doesn't say Sam is innocent, heck he doesn't take sides at all.

He just writes about what he say without any judgement.

What specifically about the book do you think will may permanently ruin his reputation.

I read this book. The tone of the entire thing is “look how amazing this guy is”.

If you read a book that presented Elizabeth Holmes or Bernie Madoff in this way, what would be your perspective?

I don’t pretend to have the facts or know for certain of anyone’s sure guilt, but a lot of the evidence is awfully damning.

(For example) Michael Lewis strongly insinuated that SBF took calculated and justifiable risk when losing track of $X00M for months at a time

It gets worse. Lewis is now saying that the jury should read his book, and that either the jury will acquit SBF, or they will "lynch" him. He's evidently convinced that SBF did nothing wrong.

https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff/111212491776903022

I wasn't aware that reading a hagiography on the main suspect is now a requirement for jury duty. It would seem that the judge might have a thing or two to say about that.

I haven't read the book but was inclined to give Lewis the benefit of the doubt given Matt Levine's take and Lewis' other work, but that Time interview really shifted my opinion. Lewis comes off terrible in that. The folks saying he got taken in by SBF make a lot more sense to me now.

To be fair, SBF is pretty amazing.

I just finished the Lewis book and he is completely sympathetic to SBF, if you listen to the audiobook which Lewis reads, his tone of voice is borderline apologetic.

The jabs at John Ray are so unfair, how is that guy the bad guy ?? I completely understand the pleasure he feels uncovering all the traces of crime, like a bankruptcy liquidator is often asked to do. Why is Lewis showing him as an incompetent fool that is losing money to greedy lawyer because he refuses to speak the the guy who blew through billions to save the world from a robot AI we could just have unplugged ?

Hm, I'm not immediately seeing this glancing at the book's Amazon reviews:

https://www.amazon.com/Going-Infinite-Rise-Fall-Tycoon/dp/B0...

That and the story unfolding around the Blindside. Lewis defended the Tuohy family’s conservatorship over Michael Oher and claimed he must have a brain injury to explain why he wants to recoup money from them.

Also I never read Flash Boys, but my understanding is that much of the anti-HFT/IEX crowd’s rhetoric has aged poorly especially as that industry has matured.

Man, it's not in the book?

It should have been, that's been well-known for quite some time

(per sibling commenter's point)