Derivatives in and of themselves are not evil. There's nothing evil about how they're traded, how they're accounted for, and how they're financed, like any other financial instrument, if done properly.

Dubai was a property bubble. Plain and simple. Go to Dubai and see what happened. It was... what I call it the 'Edifice complex' - it's just, we can grow by putting up lots and lots of buildings and trying to attract people to come here, stay here, and put up offices here and sooner or later, you put up too many.

I'll always understand the Schadenfreude aspect to short-selling. I get that no one will always like it. I'm also convinced to the deepest part of my bones that short-selling plays the role of real-time financial watchdog. It's one of the few checks and balances in the market.

The Chinese banking system is built on quicksand and that's the one thing a lot of people don't realize. [...] Everybody seems to think it is a free and clear open checkbook. It's not. [...] The banking system in China is extremely fragile.

The Macau casinos have a wonderful business, it's taking in money from Chinese businessmen elsewhere who send it through junky companies to casinos to gamble. The growth continues and they have basically western managers and western accounting, so we trust the numbers a little bit more.

So you know, everyone points out Greece's default record, but the history of a lot of sovereign nations is not a good one when it comes to lending them money.

Derivatives in and of themselves are not evil. There's nothing evil about how they're traded, how they're accounted for, and how they're financed, like any other financial instrument, if done properly.