Michael Lewis Quotes

Had Volcker never pushed through his radical change in policy, the world would be many bond traders and one memoir the poorer.

Before Volcker’s speech, bonds had been conservative investments, into which investors put their savings when they didn’t fancy a gamble in the stock market. After Volcker’s speech, bonds became objec...

Holding one's self responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since violation of standards, rules, and goals are insufficient in its elicitation unless responsibility c...

foodstuffs absolved of the obligation to provide vitamins and minerals cavorted with reckless abandon.

They had stumbled either upon a serious flaw in modern financial markets or into a great gambling run. Characteristically, they were not sure which it was. As Charlie pointed out, It’s really hard to...

Stigmas speak to the idea of difference and how difference shames us and those we know.

When the Goldman Sachs saleswoman called Mike Burry and told him that her firm would be happy to sell him credit default swaps in $100 million chunks, Burry guessed, rightly, that Goldman wasn’t ultim...

Those who say don't know, those who know don't say

How do you explain to an innocent citizen of the free world the importance of a credit default swap on a double-A tranche of a subprime-backed collateralized debt obligation? He tried, but his English...

A credit default swap was confusing mainly because it wasn’t really a swap at all. It was an insurance policy, typically on a corporate bond, with semiannual premium payments and a fixed term. For ins...

What Gutfreund said has become a legend at Salomon Brothers and a visceral part of its corporate identity. He said: One hand, one million dollars, no tears.

The Piranha didn’t talk like a person. He said things like If you fuckin’ buy this bond in a fuckin’ trade, you’re fuckin’ fucked. And If you don’t pay fuckin’ attention to the fuckin’ two-year, you g...

When you’re a conservative Republican, you never think people are making money by ripping other people off, he said. His mind was now fully open to the possibility. I now realized there was an entire...

That's what happens when you're thirty-seven years old: you do the things you always did but the result is somehow different.

The creation of the mortgage bond market, a decade earlier, had extended Wall Street into a place it had never before been: the debts of ordinary Americans.

Crucial decisions are made, today as thousands of years ago, in terms of the intuitive guesses and preferences of a few men in positions of authority...[it is] quite likely that the fate of entire soc...

On its surface, the booming market in side bets on subprime mortgage bonds seemed to be the financial equivalent of fantasy football: a benign, if silly, facsimile of investing. Alas, there was a diff...

You need to be so careful when there is one simple diagnosis that instantly pops into your mind that beautifully explains everything all at once. That's when you need to stop and check your thinking.....

From the snap of the ball to the snap of the first bone is closer to four seconds than to five.and Lawrence Taylor (fearless tackle) WE all have fears, we all have fears!!

Corporate finance, which services the corporations and governments that borrow money, and that are known as clients, is, by comparison, a refined and unworldly place. Because they don’t risk money, co...