The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Quotes

The creation of the mortgage bond market, a decade earlier, had extended Wall Street into a place it had never before been: the debts of ordinary Americans (1.14)

These companies disclosed their ever-growing earnings, but not much else. (1.29)

The small world of investors who made big bets against subprime mortgage bonds itself contained an even smaller world: people for whom the trade became an obsession. (5.3)

Eisman wasn't just a little cynical. He held a picture of the financial world in his head that was radically different from [...] the financial world's self-portrait. (1.35)

"They should have taken the CEO out and hung him by the f***ing testicles. Instead they sold the company and the CEO made a hundred million dollars." (1.46)

The "consumer loan" piles that Wall Street firms, led by Goldman Sachs, asked AIG FP to insure went from being 2 percent subprime mortgages to being 95 percent subprime mortgages. (3.25)

Historically, a Wall Street firm worried over the creditworthiness of its customers; its customers often took it on faith that the casino would be able to pay off its winners. (2.58)

Now he couldn't help but wonder who exactly was on the other side of his trades—what madman would be selling him so much insurance on bonds he had handpicked to explode? (2.65)