“ 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… Michael Lewis
“ Imagine the big rating agencies as three competitive saloons standing side by side, with each free to set its own drinking age. Before long, nine-year-olds would be downing bourbon Roger Lowenstein
“ This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our ta… Mary Lease
“ If your portfolio is made up of the investments that you have made in the lives of people, you will have amassed a wealth so vast that all the portfolios that will ever float the trading floor on Wall… Craig D. Lounsbrough
“ 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
“ That City of yours is a morbid excrescence. Wall Street is a morbid excrescence. Plainly it's a thing that has grown out upon the social body rather like -- what do you call it? -- an embolism, thromb… H.G. Wells
“ 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… Michael Lewis
“ 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. Michael Lewis
“ 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… Michael Lewis
“ 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
“ Sir Gerald Moore: I was at dinner last evening, and halfway through the pudding, this four-year-old child came alone, dragging a little toy cart. And on the cart was a fresh turd. Her own, I suppose.… Tom Wolfe
“ 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
“ Henry Lloyd was with Darrow when they toured the mine. It was a dreadful experience, Lloyd said, "like a foretaste of the inferno.""You might as well get used to it," Darrow told him. Heaven was reser… John A. Farrell
“ On Wall Street, Clarence was a diamond in a sea of glass, never greedy, never an ambulance-chaser, never the kind of person who deserved to die in the way that he did. Rebecca McNutt
“ Love is like stocks, if you don't want to suffer loss quickly, you better diversify! Tice Davids aka David T. Parker
“ In order to remain undead, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own.' I've always supposed that Wall Street traders utter essentially the same sentence. Thomas C. Foster
“ 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… Michael Lewis
“ 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… Michael Lewis
“ I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy. Warren Buffett
“ Wisdom, itself, is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion. John Kenneth Galbraith
