Liar's Poker

by Michael Lewis

Up to the point of his transfer to the mortgage department, Ranieri had dominated every department he had joined. The firm encouraged both aggression and ability; it made a point never to interfere with natural jungle forces. In a matter of months after his appointment, power over the new mortgage department consolidated in Ranieri’s hands. In view of Ranieri’s ambition, even Dall concedes a coup was inevitable. Dall fell ill, and was often away. In his absence, Ranieri started a research department (“Mortgages are about maths,” he, the college drop-out, insisted) by asking Michael Waldman, a top mathematician, to join him. The request came, as Waldman recalls, “in Lewie’s usual forceful manner.” Then Ranieri persuaded the firm to give him a sales force to sell the god-forsaken mortgages he was being asked to trade. All of a sudden, a dozen salesmen learned they had to please Lew Ranieri, rather than whomever they had been pleasing before. Rich Shuster, who had been a thrift salesman in the Salomon Brothers’ Chicago office, now found himself a mortgage salesman working for Lewie Ranieri. “Once I misdialled the commercial paper department and got mortgages instead. Lewie happened to answer the phone and immediately realised what had happened. He started to shout at me, ‘What the fuck are you doing selling commercial paper? You are paid to sell mortgages!’” Salesmen began to focus on mortgages. Steve Joseph was the only other person who conceivably could have replaced Dall, ...