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 LewisHe was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing.
Michael LewisThe inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.
Michael LewisMy client loved risk. Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself. Risk could be canned and sold like tomatoes.
Michael LewisThe only thing history teaches us, a wise man once said, is that history doesnโt teach us anything.
Michael LewisThere used to be this guy called Vinny who worked on the floor of the stock exchange, said one big investor who had observed the market for a long time. 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