Michael Lewis

My quantitative. My math specialist. Look at him, you notice anything different about him? Look at his face.

Look at his eyes, I'll give you a hint, his name is Yang. He won a national math competition in China! HE DOESN'T EVEN SPEAK ENGLISH! Yeah I'm sure of the math.

Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I'll have my wife's brother arrested.

Let me put it this way: I'm standing in front of a burning house, and I'm offering you fire insurance on it.

When you come for the payday, I'm gonna rip your eyes out. I'm gonna make a fortune. The good news is Vinnie, you're not going to care cause you're gonna make so much money. That's what I get out of it. Wanna know what you get out of it? You get the ice cream, the hot fudge, the banana and the nuts. Right now I get the sprinkles, and ya - if this goes thru, I get the cherry. But you get the sundae Vinny. You get the sundae.

In the years that followed, hundreds of bankers and rating-agency executives went to jail. The SEC was completely overhauled, and Congress had no choice but to break up the big banks and regulate the mortgage and derivative industries. Just kidding! Banks took the money the American people gave them, and used it to pay themselves huge bonuses, and lobby the Congress to kill big reform. And then they blamed immigrants and poor people, and this time even teachers! And when all was said and done, only one single banker went to jail this poor schmuck!

Let's not talk about my margins by the way. Being nice and fat… That's a nice shirt, do they make it for men?

If the mortgage bonds were the match, then the CDOs were the kerosene soaked rags, then the synthetic CDO was the atomic bomb that the drunk President holding his finger over the button, it was at that moment in that dumb restaurant, with that stupid look on his face that Mark Baum realized the whole world economy might collapse.

Is this America's angriest hedge fund?

There's a nicer way to say that, Vinnie.

I'm not fucking you, Vinnie. I'm kissing you. I'm looking deep into your eyes as I make love to you, Vinnie. I'm handing you the deal of the century on a fucking platter. What do I get out of it? Easy. I've got a 20 million a month negative carry. I've got bosses trying to pull the plug because they think I'm out of my fucking mind. All right? We make this trade, those problems aren't so big anymore. And sure, swaps are a dark market, so I set the price. whatever price I want. And when you come for the payday, I'm gonna rip your eyes out, I'm gonna make a fortune. But the good news is, Vinnie, you're not gonna care because you're gonna make so much fucking money. That's what I get out of it. Want to know what you get out of it? You get the ice cream, the hot fudge, the banana, and the nuts. right now I get the sprinkles, and yeah, if this goes through, I get the cherry. But you get the sundae, Vinnie. You get the sundae.

I'm telling you, your bet is against dumb money. It's about time you find out just how dumb that money really is.

My quantitative! My math specialist, look at him! You notice anything different about him? Look at his face!

Look at his eyes! I'll give you a hint. His name's Yang! He won a national math competition in China! He doesn't even speak English! Yeah, I'm sure of the math.

We live in an era of fraud in America. Not just in banking, but in government, education, religion, food, even baseball… What bothers me isn't that fraud is not nice. Or that fraud is mean. For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never, ever worked. Not once. Eventually you get caught, things go south. When the hell did we forget all that? I thought we were better than this, I really did.

And as fun as it is seeing pompous dumb Wall Streeters be wildly wrong, and you are *wrong*, sir. I just know that at the end of the day regular people are going to pay for all of this. Because they always, always do. That's my two cents. Thank you.

I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people.

The banks have given us 25% interest rates on credit cards. They have screwed us on student loans that we can never get out from under. Then this guy walks into my office and says those same banks got greedy, they lost track of the market, and I can profit off of their stupidity? Fuck, yeah, I want him to be right!

We're going to wait and we're going to wait and we're going to wait until they feel the pain, until they start to bleed.

And I'm getting madder and madder and I ask this guy how he sleeps at night knowing he's ripping off working people and he just leaves. He doesn't say a word. He just walks away from the lunch. So am I fucked up or is he?

So mortgage bonds are dog shit. CDOs are dog shit wrapped in cat shit.

I can't hate him. He is so transparent in his self interest that I kind of respect him.

Okay, look. If home prices don't go up, you are not going to be able to refinance. And you'll be stuck paying whatever your monthly payment is once it jumps up after your teaser rate expires. Your monthlies could go up two-, three-hundred percent.

Well, he's a liar. Actually, in this particular case, James probably is wrong.

What do you mean "all" your loans? We're talking about two loans on one house, right?

This guy's whole business is built on ripping people off, how long can that last?

So let me get this straight. The bank calls you up. They give you the bonds they want to sell. They give you clients, they give you money to run your business, give you fat fees for doing so, but you represent the investors!

Michael, I want you to have a good time but if you get a girl pregnant out of wedlock, I will crawl into the car, drive up to Oxford and cut off your penis.

No, you hear me, BITCH!. You threaten my son, you threaten me. You so much as cross into downtown, you will be sorry. I'm in a prayer group with the D.A., I'm a member of the N.R.A., and I'm always packing.

Um… before or after he turns around in his grave? Daddy's been gone five years Elaine. Make matters worse you were at the funeral, remember? You were wearing Chanel and that awful black hat? Look, here's the deal, I don't need y'all to approve my choices alright, but I do ask that you respect them. You have no idea what this boy has been through and if this becomes some running diatribe, I can find overpriced salad a lot closer to home.

There's a moment of orderly silence before a football play begins. Players are in position, linemen are frozen, and anything is possible. Then, like a traffic accident, stuff begins to randomly collide. From the snap of the ball to the snap of the first bones, closer to four seconds than five.

One-mississippi - Joe Theismann, the Redskins quarterback takes the snap and hands-off to his running back. Two-mississippi - it's a trick play, a flea-flicker. And the running back tosses it back to the quarterback. Three-mississippi - up 'til now the play's been defined by what the quarterback sees; it's about to be defined by what he doesn't. Four-mississippi - Lawrence Taylor is the best defensive player in the NFL and has been from the time he walked onto the fielded as a rookie. He will also change the game of football as we know it... Legendary quarterback Joe Theismann never played another down of football.

Now, y'all would guess that more often than not, the highest paid player on an NFL team is the quarterback. And you'd be right. But what you probably don't know is that more often than not, the second highest paid player is, thanks to Lawrence Taylor, a left tackle. Because, as every housewife knows, the first check you write is for the mortgage, but the second is for the insurance. The left tackle's job is to protect the quarterback from what he can't see coming. To protect his blind side.

You know, when I was driving all over Kingdom Come looking for you I just kept thinking about one thing - Ferdinand the Bull. Everyone assumed because he was big that he wanted to fight in the ring. But he just wanted to sit under a tree and smell the flowers… I know I should have asked this a long time ago but do you even wanna play football? I mean, do you even like it?

Courage is a hard thing to figure. You can have courage based on a dumb idea or mistake, but you're not supposed to question adults, or your coach or your teacher, because they make the rules. Maybe they know best, but maybe they don't. It all depends on who you are, where you come from. Didn't at least one of the six hundred guys think about giving up, and joining with the other side? I mean, valley of death that's pretty salty stuff. That's why courage it's tricky. Should you always do what others tell you to do? Sometimes you might not even know why you're doing something. I mean any fool can have courage. But honor, that's the real reason for you either do something or you don't. It's who you are and maybe who you want to be. If you die trying for something important, then you have both honor and courage, and that's pretty good. I think that's what the writer was saying, that you should hope for courage and try for honor. And maybe even pray that the people telling you what to do have some, too.