The Big Short Quotes

Mark Baum 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.

Mark Baum 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.

Ben Rickert If we're right, people lose homes. People lose jobs, people lose retirement savings, people lose pensions. You know what I hate about fucking banking? It reduces people to numbers. Here's a number - every 1% unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die, did you know that?

Mark Baum They knew. They knew the taxpayers would bail them out. They weren't being stupid; they just didn't care.

Michael Burry I may have been early, but I'm not wrong.

Ben Rickert The NSA has a $52-billion budget and the ability to monitor tens of millions of calls a second. You think they're not using it?

Mark Baum So, mortgage bonds are dog shit, and CDO's are dog shit wrapped in cat shit?

Mark Baum I'm going to try to find moral redemption at the roulette table.

Jared Vennett Is this America's angriest hedge fund?

Michael Burry That's a nice haircut, did you do it yourself?

Michael Burry I met my wife through Match.com. My profile said, "I am a medical student with only one eye, an awkward social manner, and $145,000 in student loans." She wrote back, "You're just what I've been looking for." She meant "honest", so let me be honest. Making money is not like what I thought it would be. This business kills the part of life that is essential, the part that has nothing to do with business. For the past two years, my insides have felt like they've been eating themselves. All the people that I respected won't talk to me anymore, except through lawyers. People want an authority to tell them how to value things, but they choose this authority not based on facts or results. They choose it because it seems authoritative and familiar. And I am not, nor ever have been, "familiar." So...so I have come to the sullen realization that I must close down the fund. Sincerely, Michael J. Burry, M.D.

Jared Vennett In the late 70s, banking wasn't a job you went into to make large sums of money. It was a fucking snooze, filled with losers. Like selling insurance or accounting. And if banking was boring, then the bond department at the bank was straight up comatose. We all know about bonds. You give em to your snot-nosed kid when he turns 15; maybe, when he's 30, he makes a hundred bucks. Boring. That is until ] came on the scene at Salomon Brothers. You might not know who he is, but he changed your life more than Michael Jordan, the iPod, and YouTube put together. You see, Lewis didn't know it yet, but he had already changed banking forever with one simple idea.

Mark Baum Let me ask you this: What company treats its customers that shittily and succeeds?...Fine, okay, Goldman.

Mark Baum 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.

Mark Baum Okay...sell it all.

Ben Rickert Just...don't fucking dance.

Michael Burry Lawrence, I don't know how to be sarcastic.

Mark Baum I can't hate him. He's so transparent in his self-interest, that I kind of respect him. Would I buy a car from him? No.

Ben Rickert The largest bank in France just froze its money-market accounts. This thing's starting to hit across Europe. Greece and Iceland are finished, Spain's teetering.

Jared Vennett The money came raining down, and for the first time, the banker went from the country club to the strip club. Pretty soon, stocks and savings were almost inconsequential. They were doing $50, $100, $200 billion in mortgage bonds and dozens of other securities a year, and America barely noticed as its number one industry became boring old banking. And then, one day, almost 30 years later, in 2008, it all came crashing down. In the end, Lewis Ranieri's mortgage-backed security mutated into a monstrosity that collapsed the whole world economy, and none of the experts or leaders or talking heads had a clue it was coming. I'm guessing most of you still don't really know what happened. Yeah, you got a soundbite you repeat so you don't sound dumb but come on. But there were some who saw it coming. While the whole world was having a big old party, a few outsiders and weirdos saw what no one else could. Not me. I'm not a weirdo, I'm pretty fucking cool, but we'll meet again later. These outsiders saw the giant lie at the heart of the economy, and they saw it by doing something the rest of the suckers never thought to do: They looked.

Mark Baum 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!

Mark Baum 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 the fucked up one, or is he?

Ben Rickert I'm trying to sell $200 million worth of securities...in a pub...it smells like sheep.

Ben Rickert You guys said you wanted to be rich, now you're rich.

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

Mark Baum I am happy when I'm unhappy.https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/f9f9ee13-826e-4f1a-9343-805c8ea747cc

Ben Rickert If you don't want the offer, you can just hang up...that's what I thought.

Ben Rickert Do you realize what you just did? You just bet against the American economy.

Mark Baum Holy shit. All this time I've been trying to figure out who it is I'm betting against, and it's Morgan-Stanley. Which is me.

Mark Baum It's two simple questions: Is there a bubble? And if there is, how exposed are the banks?