Liar's Poker

by Michael Lewis

Salomon Brothers had written to me in London to announce that they would pay me an MBA’s wage – though I had no MBA – of forty-two thousand dollars plus a bonus after the first six months of six thousand more. At that time I hadn’t the education required to feel poor on forty-eight thousand dollars (then equivalent to forty-five thousand pounds) a year. Receiving the news in England, the land of limp paycheques, accentuated the generosity of Salomon’s purse. A chaired professor of the London School of Economics, who took a keen interest in material affairs, stared at me bug-eyed and gurgled when he heard what I was to be paid. It was twice what he earned. He was in his mid-forties and at the top of his profession. I was twenty-four years old and at the bottom of mine. There was no justice in the world, and thank goodness for that.