Home > Work > Liar's Poker

Liar's Poker QUOTES

Liar's Poker QUOTES

1 " The difference between Strauss and Ranieri?” says one trader still at Salomon. “That’s easy. Strauss wouldn’t stoop to use the men’s room on the trading floor. He’d go upstairs. Lewie would piss on your desk. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

2 " It was the job of people like me to make up reasons, to spin a plausible yarn. And it’s amazing what people will believe. Heavy selling out of the Middle East was an old standby. Since no one ever had any clue what the Arabs were doing with their money or why, no story involving Arabs could ever be refuted. So if you didn’t know why the dollar was falling, you shouted out something about Arabs. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

3 " He shouted into the phone, “That is fuckin’ awesome. I mean fuckin’ awesome. I fuckin’ mean fucking awesome. You are one Big Swinging Dick, and don’t ever let anybody tell you different.” It brought tears to my eyes to hear it, to be called a Big Swinging Dick by the man who, years ago, had given birth to the distinction and in my mind had the greatest right to confer it upon me. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

4 " Buy potatoes,” he said. “Gotta hop.” Then he hung up. Of course. A cloud of fallout would threaten European food and water supplies, including the potato crop, placing a premium on uncontaminated American substitutes. Perhaps a few folks other than potato farmers think of the price of potatoes in America minutes after the explosion of a nuclear reactor in Russian, but I have never met them. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

5 " The men on the trading floor may not have been to school, but they have Ph.D.’s in man’s ignorance. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

6 " The only inexplicable aspect of the process was that economic theory (which is, after all, what economics students were supposed to know) served almost no function in an investment bank. The bankers used economics as a sort of standardized test of general intelligence. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

7 " The markets in the long run are no doubt driven by fundamental economic laws—if the United States runs a persistent trade deficit, the dollar will eventually plummet—but in the short run money flows less rationally. Fear and, to a lesser extent, greed are what make money move. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

8 " The Piranha didn’t talk like a person. He said things like “If you fuckin’ buy this bond in a fuckin’ trade, you’re fuckin’ fucked.” And “If you don’t pay fuckin’ attention to the fuckin’ two-year, you get your fuckin’ face ripped off.” Noun, verb, adjective: fucker, fuck, fucking. No part of speech was spared. His world was filled with copulating inanimate objects and people getting their faces ripped off. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

9 " But everyone wanted to be a Big Swinging Dick, even the women. Big Swinging Dickettes. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

10 " What Gutfreund said has become a legend at Salomon Brothers and a visceral part of its corporate identity. He said: “One hand, one million dollars, no tears. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

11 " If there was a single lesson I took away from Salomon Brothers, it is that rarely do all parties win. The nature of the game is zero sum. A dollar out of my customer’s pocket was a dollar in ours, and vice versa. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

12 " You want loyalty, hire a cocker spaniel. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

13 " It’s taboo,” he said. “When they ask you why you want to be an investment banker, you’re supposed to talk about the challenges, and the thrill of doing deals, and the excitement of working with such high-calibre people, but never, ever mention money. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

14 " The first thing you learn on the trading floor is that when large numbers of people are after the same commodity, be it a stock, a bond, or a job, the commodity quickly becomes overvalued. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

15 " The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. —Sun-tzu "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

16 " I’m now convinced that the worst thing a man can do with a telephone without breaking the law is to call someone he doesn’t know and try to sell that person something he doesn’t want. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

17 " It was striking how little control we had of events, particularly in view of how assiduously we cultivated the appearance of being in charge by smoking big cigars and saying fuck all the time. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

18 " why they studied economics, and they’d explain that it was the most practical course of study, even while they spent their time drawing funny little graphs. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

19 " The astute investor Warren Buffett is fond of saying that any player unaware of the fool in the market probably is the fool in the market. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker

20 " Corporate finance, which services the corporations and governments that borrow money, and that are known as “clients,” is, by comparison, a refined and unworldly place. Because they don’t risk money, corporate financiers are considered wimps by traders. "

― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker