Obscurity
Throughout the text, Michael Lewis is careful to provide very clear explanations of financial concepts for his readers. This is in part a way to combat the obscurity and obfuscation he encounters on Wall Street; he emphasizes that many terms and concepts on Wall Street are very difficult to understand, and are often made more difficult by people's choice of unwieldy language and confusing terms. Lewis explains that one of the big problems with Wall Street is this obscurity and lack of transparency—meaning it is difficulty to understanding what is going on without being a banker yourself. Even some people very high up on Wall Street, like the CEO of Morgan Stanley, have trouble understanding the inner workings of their business. The confusion that pervades Wall Street is part of what allows for hidden risks and shady trades to exist, and leads to the general crisis of 2007-2008. Even after the crisis, some people still could not understand or explain what had happened. Lewis' text combats this obscurity by attempting to lay everything out on the table in a clearer fashion.
Overconfidence
Many of Lewis' characters display overconfidence. This is especially true of those who believe that the subprime mortgage bond market will never go bad--people who tend to work for large firms that have invested in the subprime mortgage bond market and have a vested interest in its continued success. More skeptical characters like Charlie Ledley, Steve Eisman, and Michael Burry are baffled by the overconfidence they encounter at conferences in Las Vegas where they come face to face with these Wall Street types. They realize that such overconfidence is one of the major problems with Wall Street; because so many people have such unshaken confidence in their own abilities and in the power and prestige of their companies, they are unable to recognize when something does go wrong. This overconfidence is partly what leads so many people to overlook the problems with the subprime mortgage bond market and continue on as normal, without addressing them until they explode in 2008.
Outsiders
Outsiders play a very important role in Lewis' text. Most of his main characters could be called outsiders. Steve Eisman is an outsider because he is known for his brash manner and rudeness, and because he believes that Wall Street is corrupt. Michael Burry is an outsider because he is socially awkward and chooses to bet against the subprime mortgage market. Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai are outsiders because they have very little formal experience on Wall Street and take the unpopular position of making long-term bets. These characters are also notable for being some of the few people to recognize the impending disaster before everyone else on Wall Street did. Thus, Lewis emphasizes that outsiders are often those most able to spot problems and act to resolve them, precisely because they are not caught in the middle of the action and have a different perspective on the situation at hand.
Chains of Command
One of the obstacles facing Wall Street and its ability to control problems, like the issues with the subprime mortgage market, is its strict chain of command. This is shown to be an issue at various points in the text. For example, when Gene Park of AIG FP attempts to warn his boss about the fact that the subprime mortgage bonds the company owned were largely of very bad quality, he is shut down by his boss. The boss, Joe Cassano, has a deep need for obedience and respect, and cannot tolerate a subordinate giving him advice that runs counter to his own actions and opinions. Thus, AIG FP's process of weeding out these bad loans is halted by the importance given to chains of command. This is also true of Wall Street as a whole: those who are highest up have the most control, and don't tend to listen closely to subordinates' warnings. For this reason, it becomes difficult for anyone to warn others of problems and actually take action to resolve them.
Tradition
Tradition plays an important role on Wall Street. It is often for the sake of tradition that certain actions are taken, and others avoided. Many of these traditions also build up a toxic atmosphere on Wall Street. For example, it is traditional for superiors to treat inferiors poorly, for it to be a male and chauvinism-dominated industry, for those with wealth to spend it lavishly at conferences where everyone gets together, etc. Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai of Cornwall Capital run into many of these strange traditions when they attend the Las Vegas conference and meet the actual people who run Wall Street. Ledley also experiences some of them when he goes shooting with men on Wall Street as a way of currying their favor; he is put off by this focus on a hyper-masculine activity, and the use of targets such as Muslims, black men, etc. These ingrained traditions also make it difficult for outsiders like Ledley, Mai, Eisman, and Burry to break into Wall Street. For this reason, people who could change the course of Wall Street and warn against certain problems are unable to do so, because they are locked out by strict traditions.
Distrust and Skepticism
A sense of distrust and skepticism is a defining characteristic of all of Lewis' main characters. Steve Eisman is particularly distrustful of Wall Street, believing that it is all corrupt. Michael Burry is very skeptical of peoples' incentives, and their ability to accurately predict risk. Charlie Ledley and Jamie Mai are also particularly skeptical about how well people can actually predict risk, and how well Wall Street's models can do this. Ben Hockett essentially distrusts everything and everyone, and is always predicting major disaster. Vincent Daniel is also very distrustful of people, to the point that he never fully comes to trust Greg Lippmann. This attitude becomes an important theme in the book, which distinguishes the people who are able to see and diagnose disaster, and those who remain ignorant. It stands out as a distinguishing factor between the pessimistic outsiders who bet against the subprime mortgage bond market, and the optimistic insiders who are stuck bearing the burden of their mistaken confidence.
Wilful Ignorance vs Purposeful Evil
The question of whether people on Wall Street were wilfully ignorant or purposefully evil is one of the main ones of the text. Lewis ends on a note of concluding that the people who perpetrated the housing bubble and supported the subprime mortgage bond market must have been one of the two. Either they ignored the risks they were taking and refused to recognize just how disastrous their actions could be, or they were purposefully choosing to make money for themselves while screwing everyone else over. Neither of these options is especially flattering for Wall Street; in either scenario, the people on Wall Street are to blame for the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Thus, there is no clear dichotomy between these two options: they are, instead, two similarly-damning explanations for the motivations of people on Wall Street. Michael Lewis brings out this theme throughout the book by profiling various people on Wall Street, who act either as wilful ignorants or as deliberate crooks.
