Flutterby™! : Pop goes the bubble

Michael Lewis looks at the end of the Wall Street boom:

Whatever rising anger Eisman felt was offset by the man’s genial disposition. Not only did he not mind that Eisman took a dim view of his C.D.O.’s; he saw it as a basis for friendship. “Then he said something that blew my mind,” Eisman tells me. “He says, ‘I love guys like you who short my market. Without you, I don’t have anything to buy.’ ”

(Via MeFi) The screwed up nature of the investment market meant that those shorting, betting on a fall, were helping to drive the market up.

I've been thinking about the notion of hidden information: If you know something and the other party to the transaction doesn't, when are you ethically compelled to offer up that information. That the car they just test drove has a timing belt about to break? That secret catalyst in the process by which the special sauce gets made? Under which cup the pea is? I don't have an answer, but Wall Street hasn't been asking the questions, for decades.