Eisman Quotes & Sayings

The only one among them who wrestled a bit with their role - as the guys who had made a fortune betting against their own society - was Vincent Daniel. "Vinny, being from Queens, needs to see the dark side of everything," said Eisman. To — Michael Lewis

I'm thinking there should be a dating site called "Tap That" - Jonathan "Jack" McVoy — E.J. Eisman

There was more than one way to think about Mike Burry's purchase of a billion dollars in credit default swaps. The first was as a simple, even innocent, insurance contract. Burry made his semiannual premium payments and, in return, received protection against the default of a billion dollars' worth of bonds. He'd either be paid zero, if the triple-B-rated bonds he'd insured proved good, or a billion dollars, if those triple-B-rated bonds went bad. But of course Mike Burry didn't own any triple-B-rated subprime mortgage bonds, or anything like them. He had no property to "insure" it was as if he had bought fire insurance on some slum with a history of burning down. To him, as to Steve Eisman, a credit default swap wasn't insurance at all but an outright speculative bet against the market - and this was the second way to think about it. — Michael Lewis

That Wall Street has gone down because of this is justice ... They built a castle to rip people off. Not once in all these years have I come across a person inside a big Wall Street firm who was having a crisis of conscience. — Steve Eisman

That was Eisman's logic: the logic of Wall Street's pecking order. Goldman Sachs was the big kid who ran the games in this neighborhood. Merrill Lynch was the little fat kid assigned the least pleasant roles, just happy to be a part of things. The game, as Eisman saw it, was crack the whip. He assumed Merrill Lynch had taken its assigned place at the end of the chain. On — Michael Lewis

Household was making loans at a faster pace than ever. A big source of its growth had been the second mortgage. The document offered a fifteen-year, fixed-rate loan, but it was bizarrely disguised as a thirty-year loan. It took the stream of payments the homeowner would make to Household over fifteen years, spread it hypothetically over thirty years, and asked: If you were making the same dollar payments over thirty years that you are in fact making over fifteen, what would your "effective rate" of interest be? It was a weird, dishonest sales pitch. The borrower was told he had an "effective interest rate of 7 percent" when he was in fact paying something like 12.5 percent. "It was blatant fraud," said Eisman. "They were tricking their customers. — Michael Lewis

Eisman took the cart to the clubhouse and bought a hoodie. The hoodie covered up his t-shirt and made him look a lot like a guy who had just bought a hoodie to cover up his t-shirt. — Michael Lewis

When Steve Eisman stumbled into this new, rapidly growing industry of specialty finance, the mortgage bond was about to be put to a new use: making loans that did not qualify for government guarantees. The purpose was to extend credit to less and less creditworthy homeowners, not so that they might buy a house but so that they could cash out whatever equity they had in the house they already owned. — Michael Lewis

The guest speaker was Herb Sandler, the CEO of a giant savings and loan called Golden West Financial Corporation. "Someone asked him if he believed in the free checking model," recalls Eisman. "And he said, 'Turn off your tape recorders.' Everyone turned off their tape recorders. And he explained that they avoided free checking because it was really a tax on poor people - in the form of fines for overdrawing their checking accounts. And that banks that used it were really just banking on being able to rip off poor people even more than they could if they charged them for their checks. — Michael Lewis

If my liver cared enough, it would have told me to stop. - Jonathan "Jack" McVoy — E.J. Eisman

When you're a conservative Republican, you never think people are making money by ripping other people off," he said. His mind was now fully open to the possibility. "I now realized there was an entire industry, called consumer finance, that basically existed to rip people off. — Michael Lewis

Eisman was quick to see narratives, he explained the world in stories, and this was one of the stories he used to explain himself. The — Michael Lewis

He has no interest in manners. Believe me, I've tried and I've tried and I've tried." After she'd brought him home for the first time, her mother had said, "Well, we can't use him but we can definitely auction him off at UJA."* Eisman had what amounted to a talent for offending people. "He's not tactically rude," his wife explains. "He's sincerely rude. He knows everyone thinks of him as a character but he doesn't think of himself that way. Steven lives inside his head. — Michael Lewis

Monday; a cross between Wednesday this week and Thursday next week." - Jonathan "Jack" McVoy — E.J. Eisman

raising chickens. It was almost as hard for Eisman to imagine himself raising chickens as it was for people who knew him, but he'd agreed. "The idea of it was so unbelievably unappealing to him," says his wife, "that he started to work harder." Eisman traveled all over Europe and the United States searching for people willing to invest with him and found exactly one: an insurance company, which staked him to $50 million. It wasn't enough to create a sustainable equity fund, but it was a start. Instead of money, Eisman — Michael Lewis

It was in Las Vegas that Eisman and his associates' attitude toward the U.S. bond market hardened into something like its final shape. As Vinny put it, "That was the moment when we said, 'Holy shit, this isn't just credit. This is a fictitious Ponzi scheme.'" In Vegas the question lingering at the back of their minds ceased to be, Do these bond market people know something we do not? It was replaced by, Do they deserve merely to be fired, or should they be put in jail? Are they delusional, or do they know what they're doing? Danny thought that the vast majority of the people in the industry were blinded by their interests and failed to see the risks they had created. Vinny, always darker, said, "There were more morons than crooks, but the crooks were higher up. — Michael Lewis

He was pressured to be a bit more upbeat, but upbeat did not come naturally to Steve Eisman. He could fake upbeat, and sometimes did, but he was happier not bothering. — Michael Lewis

The triple-A tranches all traded at one price, the triple-B tranches all traded at another, even though there were important differences from one triple-B tranche to another. As the bonds were all priced off the Moody's rating, the most overpriced bonds were the bonds that had been most ineptly rated. And the bonds that had been most ineptly rated were the bonds that Wall Street firms had tricked the rating agencies into rating most ineptly. "I cannot fucking believe this is allowed," said Eisman. — Michael Lewis

Which Wall Street big shots Eisman had insulted was a matter of which Wall Street big shots' presence Eisman was allowed into. — Michael Lewis

Golfing with Eisman wasn't like golfing with other Wall Street people. The round usually began with a collective discomfort on the first tee, after Eisman turned up wearing something that violated the Wall Street golfer's notion of propriety. — Michael Lewis

Love means never to have to say, "That hooker meant nothing to me" - Jonathan "Jack" McVoy — E.J. Eisman

Eisman was now explaining why the world was going to blow up, but his partners were only half-listening ... because the financial world was blowing up. — Michael Lewis

Who takes out a home loan and doesn't make the first payment?" asked Danny Moses, putting the matter one way. "Who the fuck lends money to people who can't make the first payment?" asked Eisman, putting it another. When — Michael Lewis

Unpleasant odor wafting from the subprime mortgage industry that Eisman had detected. These companies disclosed their ever-growing earnings, but not much else. One of the many items they failed to disclose was the delinquency rate of the home loans they were making. — Michael Lewis

In Eisman's view, the unwillingness of the U.S. government to allow the bankers to fail was less a solution than a symptom of a still deeply dysfunctional financial system. — Michael Lewis

Aldinger, collected his $100 million, Eisman was on his way to becoming the financial market's first socialist. "When you're a conservative Republican, you never think people are making money by ripping other people off," he said. His mind was now fully — Michael Lewis

Danny and Vinny both thought the problem in this case was Eisman's affinity for Bear Stearns. The most hated firm on Wall Street, famous mainly for its total indifference to the good opinion of its competitors, Eisman identified with the place! — Michael Lewis

From the point of view of the history of the universe, Max's death was not a big deal," said Eisman. "It was just my big deal." At — Michael Lewis

The for-profit education industry has proven equal to the task. — Steve Eisman

Once in awhile you come across a company that is completely and utterly mis-priced, — Steve Eisman

There was of course no point in trying to monitor Eisman. He saw himself as a crusader, a champion of the underdog, an enemy of sinister authority. He saw himself, roughly speaking, as Spider-Man. — Michael Lewis

Ah yes! I'm feeling a powerful energy through my bullshit chokra. - Jonathan "Jack" McVoy — E.J. Eisman