“ This malignant persistence since September 11th is the biggest surprise of all. In previous decades, sneak attacks, stock-market crashes, and other great crises became hinges on which American history… George Packer
“ The one plentiful herds of magazine writers would continue to be culled - by the Internet, by the recession, by the American public, who would rather watch TV or play video games or electronically inf… Gillian Flynn
“ Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his. Ronald Reagan
“ When you need to borrow money the Mob seems like a better deal I think. 'You don't pay me back I break both yer legs.' Is that all? You won't take my house or wreck my credit rating? Fine where do I s… Craig Ferguson
“ Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“ The most empowering thing you can do though is to create innovative ways to bring in livable wages. That begins with a debt free lifestyle. Brandi L. Bates
“ Millennials: We lost the genetic lottery. We graduated high school into terrorist attacks and wars. We graduated college into a recession and mounds of debt. We will never acquire the financial cushio… Maggie Georgiana Young
“ If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties… Tyler Cowen
“ 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… Michael Lewis
“ You know what? We need a recession in this country, because that would finaly weed out al the subnormal, underdeveloped, stupefied, puerile people in this workforce. Jen Lancaster
“ 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… Michael Lewis
“ 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. Michael Lewis
“ This crisis is not simply a more severe version of the usual business cycle recession, the typical downturn in which economies ultimately adjust and stabilize. Timothy Geithner
“ The CDO was, in effect, a credit laundering service for the residents of Lower Middle Class America. For Wall Street it was a machine that turned lead into gold. Michael Lewis
“ The simple measure of sanity in housing prices, Zelman argued, was the ratio of median home price to income. Historically, in the United States, it ran around 3:1; by late 2004, it had risen nationall… Michael Lewis
“ In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000. Michael Lewis
“ What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don’t need to make smart decisions—if they can get rich making dumb decisions? Michael Lewis
“ Because the lenders sold many—though not all—of the loans they made to other investors, in the form of mortgage bonds, the industry was also fraught with moral hazard. It was a fast-buck business, say… Michael Lewis
