Leave the subprimes, CDOs, Lehmans, AIGs all aside. Leave the story aside, too. Check this. If this doesn’t make you sit up and notice, I don’t know what else will:
Eisman had a curious way of listening; he didn’t so much listen to what you were saying as subcontract to some remote region of his brain the task of deciding whether whatever you were saying was worth listening to, while his mind went off to play on its own. As a result, he never actually heard what you said to him the first time you said it. If his mental subcontractor detected a level of interest in what you had just said, it radioed a signal to the mother ship, which then wheeled around with the most intense focus. “Say that again,” he’d say. And you would! Because now Eisman was so obviously listening to you, and, as he listened so selectively, you felt flattered.
Michael Lewis
Leave the subprimes, CDOs, Lehmans, AIGs all aside. Leave the story aside, too. Check this. If this doesn’t make you sit up and notice, I don’t know what else will: