>> michael jackson. >> i watched him transform himself from the child he was to the figure he became. all those facelifts and distortions. i found it to be a very sad, sad journey. >> this is "piers morgan tonight." good evening, we start with breaking news tonight. a live shot from downtown new york. the clock is ticking. a potential confrontation of the group occupy wall street. they have to clear out by 7:00 tomorrow morning to clean up. they say it's an excuse to get them out. the united autoworkers union is going to show up. my next guest knows more about this than anybody else and why they are so fired up. it's michael lewis. what do you make of all this occupy wall street? are they right? do you know what they are protesting about? do they know what they are protesting about? >> nobody put a fine point on it but it's not hard to see why people might be outraged by wall street. i mean, it is incredible, really, what's happened in society. you have a private sector that the banking system basically went insane. it generated the conditions for the financial crisis. got bailed out by the taxpayers. all the wall street firms out of business. then restored to health. they promptly set about attempts to reform them. against this, there is a backdrop of rising dispair and worse unemployment prospects for young people. it does surprise me. it's hard to see right now where it goes because the minute, of course the minute the demands become specific, some part of the group is probably alienated. i can absolutely understand the outrage. i think the thing has legs because it's justified. it's just a question of how it gets -- how the anger gets directed. >> clearly, i mean your view is one that i share, the anger directed at the way that wall street got away with it and the responsibility of what happened with the financial crisis. that is a real scandal. nobody has been held to account. like you say, i have been reading your book, "boomerang." you look at goldman sachs and it's all right for them, they god bailed out and are giving great big bonuses again. the public is left unemployed and homeless and suffering. >> yes, take it even one step further. that is, these firms were rescued because they were said to be and seemed to be too big to fail. they have gotten bigger and more dangerous to the system since then so that the problem hasn't been sorted out. it's not as if they were a run on goldman sachs tomorrow and they looked like they were going to collapse and the government could let it go. it's a very strange situation. you have socialism for the capitalists. they are backstopped by the government. they can do what they do because the government is there to back them up if something goes wrong. you have social support for elites for the best people in society and at the same time, you have red and tooth and claw capitalism for everyone else. that's the sense of unfairness that gives rise. i mean, i feel it and i'm well off. i can only imagine what it feels like to be 20 years old, lots of student loans and no job prospects and wonder why the world is the way it is. so, to me, it's a very interesting social movement because it isn't half baked. it's fully baked. there are real reasons for people to be on the streets. kind of a question, why now. the answer is, the pain had to accumulate to the point people felt they needed to do something about it. i think for awhile, after the financial crisis, people thought we can go back to normal. it's clear we can't. >> how bad do you think the situation really is. just today, harrisburg in pennsylvania declared themselves bankrupt. when whole towns declare themselves as bankrupt, this is a sign it's pretty serious, isn't it? >> um, yes, but i'm not sure what a bankruptcy of harrisburg means. i say this, if you look at where the united states is vulnerable in the way that europe is vulnerable, vulnerable to a collapse in faith in the financial markets in the united states to the point where people won't loan money to go about their business. it is at the local level. the federal government, you know, in a state of extreme paralysis and declining to raise the debt ceiling suffered a downgrade of its debt. awhile back, standard and poor downgraded from aaa to aa. the financial markets responded to that by saying, rushing into u.s. treasury bonds. it's a strange situation. to some extent, the worse the federal government manages affairs the more people will lend to the treasury because it is relatively less risky. at the local level, with states and municipalities, it's not true. anytime whispers begin about defaults in the municipal bond market, investors flee. it seems to be, the crisis seems to be a financial problem. it's become increasingly social and political. what you see on the ground, i mean in my home state of california, for example, yes, we have a bankrupt city called vallejo but we have bigger cities flirting with bankruptcy. whether or not they declare it is almost immaterial. they can't afford the services they need to provide. you have degrade dags of public life. you have them cutting police and fire departments by half, making the world less safe. i think people are feeling that. it's slow. i mean it's a difficult story to perceive moment-to-moment because the pace of change is glacial. >> it sounds like an extraordinary thing to contemplate. isn't america basically bust financially? >> well, america has been living beyond its means for a generation. so, bust is the point where greece is, right? that's the point where people decide you will never pay it back, so they won't lend you more. but, until it gets to that point, until the chinese, for example, won't buy our treasury bonds, we are not bust. we are living on borrowed time. to me, the unsettling thing, what is scary to contemplate is this isn't as some cast it, a sort of dysfunction at the top of society. dysfunction with political elites. this isn't a matter of having elected the wrong people to do our business. the problem is that the american people seem to be getting what they want. the polls show what people want in public services but not to pay for them. i's a matter of public attitudes that need to shift. the only way that happens is that we do actually flirt with being bust. i don't see anything between us in being bust. >> what do you see as politics. clearly, the next election in america is going to be fought on the economy in various ways. when you look at the gop runners it looks like mitt romney and herman cain are pulling away. do you believe barack obama can win a second term or will it literally come down to what are the jobless figures and the credit rating of america? where do you see this politically? >> you have to accept that like everyone else in the world when i answer that question, i'm just guessing. i mean nobody knows. as you know, all sorts of things could happen to change that have nothing to do with the economy. i mean, what if there are terrorist attacks in the united states. there are all kind of factors that may enter into the election that we have yet, we can't major don't imagine. strictly, if the election is fought, strictly on the economy and the economy is the way it is now, i think when it comes to a general debate between barack obama and whoever the republican nominee is that the republican nominee is not going to look good because they don't have anything to say. obama has made, what seems to me, a clearly sensible proposal of a large short term stimulus to create demand in the economy. we are suffering from inadequate demand. it is a classic case where the government steps in. the responsible way is to have a short term stimulus and actually seem to be or actually sorting out our long term entitlements problem. but obama's proposal is in the water in congress. is it because republicans have, they don't like it. the republican nominee isn't going to like it. what is he going to say. they say okay, mitt romney, you disapprove of barack obama's plan to fix the economy, what is yours? his plan is not, i think it's going to sound like awe stairty to people. i'm bullish on obama. it would be unusual for a president to get reelected in this economic climate, but he's going to have a pretty compelling point to make. >> it's been an unusual climate. when we come back after the break, i want to talk about why a bunch of greek monks may be to blame for the mayhem. 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[ female announcer ] the travelocity guarantee. if your booking's not right, we'll help make it right, right away. from the price to the room to the trip you'll never roam alone. there's no time like the present to consider all your health insurance options. does medicare alone meet your needs? would additional coverage be better for you? well, now is a good time to take a look at an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. get started by calling for your free information kit and guide to medicare. as you probably know, medicare only covers about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. a medicare supplement insurance plan helps cover some of it. that could save you up to thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket costs. and you can visit any doctor who accepts medicare patients. with medicare supplement insurance, you'll find a range of plans to choose from to fit your needs and budget. there are no networks. no referrals to see a specialist. and you could get a pretty good idea what your out-of-pocket costs will be every month. plus, these plans travel with you anywhere in the u.s. don't let this time go by without considering if an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan is right for you. it's as easy as a phone call. rates are competitive. and these are the only medicare supplement insurance plans exclusively endorsed by aarp. remember, medicare doesn't cover everything. medicare supplement insurance plans help pay for some of the rest. you could save up to thousands of dollars a year in out-of-pocket costs. and you can choose any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan could be an option to get the coverage you need at a competitive rate. so don't wait another minute. be sure to call today. call now for your free medicare guide and information kit about aarp medicare supplement insurance plans, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. my guest, michael lewis. your book, "boomerang" tells your adventures. iceland, ireland to greece and tells horrifying stories of financial collapse in each of those countries. what made you do this? why did you go looking for whatever you found? >> there were a couple reasons. i was working on my previous book about the u.s. financial crisis and realized it was only part of the story. effectively what happened in the run up to the financial crisis is societies had been allowed to tap credit they shouldn't have been allowed to tap. they were left to do what they wanted to do with it. the temptations in the housing bubble and the subprime mortgage bubble. in other places, the story was different. the money was a way into the places. in addition, it was really clear that the financial crisis was more than one act. act one was lehman brothers going down in 2008. that, effectively what happened was the governments around the world stepped in and basically guaranteed their banking system. the banks are too big to fail. when they did that, they accepted the fact they would have to cover the losses of the banks. one of the characters i interviewed was a hedge fund manager in dallas named kyle bass. he said look at it this way. if you add the banking losses on to the existing debts of these countries, there's some countries that can't afford the bill. the countries are going to be what goes down next, like falling dominos. we had bets in place against iceland, greece, ireland, france and when you looked at that scenario, who is what we are in now, you saw that the not only would countries have trouble paying back their debts but the effect on the global financial system could be much worse. the last time we got out of this, we got out because the governments are credible. the banks screwed up. they are bankrupt but we are behind them. you can still invest money in them. what happens when the governments themselves are not credible. that's what we are living through now. that's why. i mean when greece goes down, all of a sudden, it has potentially devastating effect on lots of other places. >> what is amazing in this book is the story of greece. it seems to fall on the shoulders of some monks who are trying to raise money and they end up raising hundreds of millions of dollars and basically bankrupting greece. tell me about this. >> no, it's an amazing story. this is actually the trigger mechanism in greece. two years ago roughly when greece acknowledged that its books weren't what people thought. they had their deficits and debts were greater. the reason it happened is the previous conservative government fell and was replaced bay new government. what caused them to fall was a scandal. monks at the monastery in the north of greece who don't venture off their peninsula much. it's a gorgeous and strange place. mt. athos is a holy place only for men. they don't even let female animals on the island except for cats. they had a monastery to repair. these places are spectacular. they look like italian hill towns. they had a rubble of a monastery. they needed lots and lots of money to fix it up. the way they did it was they went through the vaults and found they had thousand-year-old deeds to the property. they got the government to recognize their rights north of greece. then they went to the government and swapped this for lots of valuable commercial real estate. the scandal is why the government did this. the exact number, i'm not sure. between 100 million and 1 billion. what the monks made on the transactions. that scandal is what caused the government to fall, the new government come in and say oh my god, it's so much worse than anybody knew. >> michael, michael. let me jump in. when you have monks behaving like this, hasn't the whole world lost their entire moral compass? >> well, you probably give monks too much credit to start with. monks have not always been well behaved people. i say it in defense of the monks. i went to the monastery and spent a little time. i became quite fond of them. i think that -- it's not as if they were taking the billion dollars to live high on the hog. all they wanted to do was rebuild their place to set up there. they were living very, very awe stair lives. in fact, the monks, i thought were moral example to the rest of greece. they were well liked like every greece person. they thought it was okay to go in and get what they could out of the government. this is a common greek problem. the greeks treat them like a pinata like goodies and everyone takes a whack at it. the monks, unlike the rest of greeks had a collaborative spirit. they were doing it for the glory of their monastery rather than their greed. i thought, actually very funny, i had an e-mail from a harvard professional saying they want to do a case study on the monks. they look like a well run enterprise. >> maybe we should find some monks and send them down to wall street. after the break, i want to talk to you about baseball, about "money ball." i saw the movie last week. >> three players. >> yeah. 47. >> okay. >> actually 51. i don't know why i lied just now. o whole milk. want to cut back on fat and not compromise on taste? try smart balance fat free milk. it's what you'd expect from the folks at smart balance. >> when i saw him next year, i keep the money. >> okay, so billy says he'll pay for it himself but when he sells him for more money next year, he's keeping the profit. okay, thank you very much. we'll call you back. come on! come on! >> money ball. brad pitt starring in your movie is cool. >> what do you want me to say, it's not cool? it's great. it's great. every now and then, a lottery ticket comes in. >> tell me about the -- when i watched the movie, i'm a big sports fan. i'm more of a cricket chap myself, but the concept, which i know is a real story behind this movie and the book was a force of good and evil. basically, what's happening is a slightly bunch of mediocre players playing. where is the flair? where is the exuberance and the passion that comes with normal sport? what are you doing to baseball? >> the passion that comes with idiot si, that's what you are looking for? >> no, what i'm saying is, it's a fine line. you hit the nail on the head. you want it to be statistical a spot from "star trek." i want the big picture. the guy you want to spend $20 million on to win the world series. >> thank god you are not running a professional sports team. here is what i would say to they because this crossed my mind as i was writing the book. it does seem from a distance true that when you are getting more and more precise in the way you measure people and their value that it seems bloodless and without passion. in fact, the story had a great deal of passion in it. the movie has a great deal of passion in it. the question is why? i think it was kind of wonderful what they did. this business of finding value in people that sometimes even the people themselves didn't know was there because the world told them they weren't valuable. it's a story of prejudices falling. so, i don't see why it's any less passionate for the players to be properly evaluated than for them not to be. it's always going to be more or at least as much art as science and predicting how cricket players or baseball players or any athlete is going to perform is going to be this, it's going to be -- it's an essentially unpredictable thing. to get better at it, nothing wrong with that. as you kind of put your finger on it, when you are now managing a sports team and you make a mistake, it's a $20 million mistake. there was a time not that long ago it was a $20,000 mistake. the athletes are so expensive, they demand to be more accurately assessed. >> what is next for you. you conquered almost every sphere of life. what's left? >> i was thinking -- i was toying with the idea of doing a book about cable talk show hosts. >> well, i think you'll find i'm exceptional good value for money. >> that's not what the producers were saying. but the -- the -- so, i don't know. i tell you what's next. i know exactly what i'm going to do when i walk out of here. i'm writing a screen play for my first book, "liars poker." that's what i'm going to do next. i find the books, generally, the minute i find out what it is, the last thing i want to do is talk about it. once i talk about it, i don't want to do it. i'll tell you after i'm done, how about that? >> come back on and talk to me after it's done? >> thanks for having me. >> is that a deal? >> yeah. >> thank you very much. >> thank you. when we come back, harry belafonte, music, race and politics. it gets lively. it's a great day. great day. great day. and there are millions on the way. >> harry belafonte must have one of the most recognizable voices of all time. he entertained the world and changed t