As idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off. Michael Lewis More Quotes by Michael Lewis More Quotes From Michael Lewis The reason the Greeks don't pay taxes is they don't trust where their taxes are going, because they know these other Greeks are taking money from the state for doing nothing. So it's - it's an essentially corrupt society. Michael Lewis doing-nothing greek pay 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 wall smart odds The institutions at the centre of capitalism are bigger than they've ever been, the pay is much greater, the ability of society to get its arms around it is much less. The political clout of the financial class is unbelievable. I'd say the story is darker than when I was there. When I was there it felt like a comedy - and now it feels more like a tragedy. Michael Lewis political tragedy class Looking into it a bit, Jamie found that the model used by Wall Street to price LEAPs, the Black-Scholes option pricing model, made some strange assumptions. Michael Lewis wall strange black 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 wall class america I'd stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985, and stumbled out, richer, in 1988, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me me as totally preposterous-which is one reason the money was so easy to walk away from. Michael Lewis brother jobs book I thought instead of a good rule for survival on Wall Street: Never agree to anything proposed on someone else's boat or you'll regret in in the morning. Michael Lewis wall regret morning The Moulin Rouge is, like the West Village and the Nasdaq, one of those places that people who don't like to take risks come to for the thrill of being on the spot where risks once were taken. Michael Lewis risk taken people If you had to point to one thing that made it less likely that the Red Sox would win the World Series, I would say it was those people that go to Fenway Park to watch the games. And then the media around it. Michael Lewis media games winning My client loved risk. Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself. Risk could be canned and sold like tomatoes. Michael Lewis tomatoes risk clients He's a machine for competitive balance, ... Yes, the money is in New York. Yes, the money is in his hands. But he squanders money. Thank God for it. Michael Lewis new-york god hands In Wall Street now, you have to hide what you're doing. It's more fun when you don't have to do that. But I don't think its sense of purpose has changed at all. Michael Lewis wall fun thinking When something happens people didn't predict, they find ways to explain it as if it were predictable. Michael Lewis ifs people way He was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing. Michael Lewis blessed mind class Managers tend to pick a strategy that is the least likely to fail, rather then to pick a strategy that is most efficient," Said Palmer. " The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move. Michael Lewis gains pain moving The sentimentality of baseball is very deeply rooted in the American baseball fan. It is the one sport that is transmitted from fathers to sons. Michael Lewis baseball sports father There's something bad in everything good and something good in everything bad. Michael Lewis They [some countries] borrowed money to go acquire things, Indian power plants and Danish newspapers and British soccer teams. And they did it willy-nilly, and they themselves a story, that Icelandic history and culture and DNA leaves us very well-suited to being investment bankers. Michael Lewis team soccer country The sports world is an echo chamber. All it takes is one quote from a general manager and a thousand sports columns bloom. Michael Lewis echoes sports world People in both fields operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage. Michael Lewis data fields people
