Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk

6. Money Honey

The scholar Marshall McLuhan elliptically noted that “the medium is the message.” The medium is newspapers, books, television, and increasingly the Internet. The message now was money. Banker Walter Wriston anticipated it: “Information about money has become almost as important as money itself.”¹

Once, newspapers gave more space to sport than financial news. When asked about the reason, Richard Harwood, the assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, replied: “I guess it is because we think sport is more interesting to readers than business and economics. I know it is to me.”² In the 1980s, business and financial news went mainstream, reflecting the increasing importance of money matters. The world rapidly became an endless ...