QUOTES OF THE DAY

“I’d thought it strange, after the financial crisis, in which Goldman had played such an important role, that the only Goldman Sachs employee who had been charged with any sort of crime was the employee who had taken something from Goldman Sachs. Thus the only Goldman Sachs employee arrested by the FBI in the aftermath of a financial crisis Goldman had done so much to fuel was the employee Goldman asked the FBI to arrest.” ― Michael Lewis, Flash Boys

“Those who know don’t tell and those who tell don’t know.” ― Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker

“The U.S. financial markets had always been either corrupt or about to be corrupted.” ― Michael Lewis, Flash Boys

“Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for a short-term reward.” ― Michael Lewis, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

“The men on the trading floor may not have been to school, but they have Ph.D.’s in man’s ignorance.” ― Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker

“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, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

“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 Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

“After the markets closed Vinny would get into his Cadillac and drive out to his big house in Long Island. Now there is the guy called Vladimir who gets into his jet and flies to his estate in Aspen for the weekend. I used to worry a little about Vinny. Now I worry a lot about Vladimir.” ― Michael Lewis, Flash Boys

“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 get your fuckin’ face ripped off.” Noun, verb, adjective: fucker, fuck, fucking. No part of speech was spared. His world was filled with copulating inanimate objects and people getting their faces ripped off.” ― Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker

“But everyone wanted to be a Big Swinging Dick, even the women. Big Swinging Dickettes.” ― Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker

“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? The incentives on Wall Street were all wrong; they’re still all wrong.” ― Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

“That was how a Salomon bond trader thought: He forgot whatever it was that he wanted to do for a minute and put his finger on the pulse of the market. If the market felt fidgety, if people were scared or desperate, he herded them like sheep into a corner, then made them pay for their uncertainty. He sat on the market until it puked gold coins. Then he worried about what he wanted to do.” ― Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker

“Germans longed to be near shit, but not in it. This, as it turns out, is an excellent description of their role in the current financial crisis.” ― Michael Lewis, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

“I have this theory,” says Andy Stone, seated in his office at Prudential-Bache Securities. “Wall Street makes its best producers into managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often neurotic and paranoid. You turn those people into managers, and they go after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that producing gave them. They usually aren’t well suited to be managers. Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get muscled out because of politics. The guys left behind are just the most ruthless of the bunch. That’s why there are cycles on Wall Street—why Salomon Brothers is getting crunched now—because the ruthless people are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure.” ― Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker