[b]Michael Lewis
Those who know don’t tell and those who tell don’t know.[/b]
Uh, what exactly?
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.
Right, tell that to the 1%.
He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity…
But not here, right?
The lesson of Buffett was: To succeed in a spectacular fashion you had to be spectacularly unusual.
Either that or inherit it from Mom and Dad.
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.
[i]CDO! Remember that:
A collateralized debt obligation (CDO) is so-called because the pooled assets – such as mortgages, bonds and loans – are essentially debt obligations that serve as collateral for the CDO. The tranches in a CDO vary substantially in their risk profile. [/i]
In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000.
Gee, I wonder who owns the house now?