Bethany McLean quotes

“The last and most painful irony is that the two longtime rival armies in the securitization market - the investment banks and the GSEs - would end up magnifying each other's sins rather than keeping each other in check.”
-- Bethany McLean

Source : Bethany McLean, Joe Nocera (2011). “All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis”, p.189, Penguin

#Army Quotes #Two Quotes #Rivals Quotes

“Building a portfolio around index funds isn’t really settling for the average. It’s just refusing to believe in magic.”
-- Bethany McLean

#Believe Quotes #Average Quotes #Magic Quotes

“No city embraced privatization more eagerly than Chicago, where I live.”
-- Bethany McLean

#Cities Quotes #Chicago Quotes #Privatization Quotes

“Home ownership was the fig leaf for the rise in subprime lending. But that was really about cash-out refinancings, not buying homes.”
-- Bethany McLean

#Home Quotes #Cash Quotes #Buying Quotes

“So Merrill Lynch has launched its first campaign in years to advertise the accomplishments of its investment banking business. The ads feature things like Merrill's recapitalization of Sierra Pacific. I guess including "helping Enron achieve its earnings goals in 1999" might be a little awkward given that Merrill Lynch bankers are currently on trial in Houston for that "accomplishment."”
-- Bethany McLean

#Years Quotes #Accomplishment Quotes #Goal Quotes

“I think synergies are a lot like UFOs: Lots of people claim to have seen them, but few can actually prove they exist.”
-- Bethany McLean

#Thinking Quotes #People Quotes #Claims Quotes

“... skepticism about past returns is crucial. The truth is, much as you may wish you could know which funds will be hot, you can't - and neither can the legions of advisers and publications that claim they can. That's why building a portfolio around index funds isn't really settling for average. It's just refusing to believe in magic.”
-- Bethany McLean

#Believe Quotes #Past Quotes #Average Quotes

“When I was a kid you always heard about the Israeli army and you always heard about this tiny little country and how everyone around them wants them gone, and every time somebody comes after them they take care of business. And so as a Jewish kid you were proud of that.”

“It won't be a question of how well-trained or well-equipped the army is but one of the authority it serves.”

“Colonialism is known in its primitive form, that is to say, by the permanent settling of repressive foreign powers, with an army, services, policies. This phase has known cruel colonial occupations which have lasted 300 years in Indonesia.”

Source : "For Ahmed Ben Bella, the liberation of the people in the South is still unachieved". Interview with Silvia Cattori, www.voltairenet.org. May 9, 2006.

“I smoked pot in college and in the Army...”

“Indo-European peoples and Semitic peoples are today still completely different... Jews almost everywhere form a special society... Muslims (the Semitic spirit is today represented mainly by Islam) and the Europeans stand face to face like two beings of different species, having nothing common in the way of thinking and feeling...”

Source : "Naţionalitatea în artă" ("Nationality in Art") by A. C. Cuza, Bucureşti: Cartea Romaneasca, 1905.

“There are two types of people in the world, and I'm one of them.”

“England and France were rivals, not only on the continent, but in the West Indies, in India, and in Europe.”

Source : Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. (1909). “Epochs of American History”

“The artist is not the transcriber of the world, he is its rival.”

“I used to do some terrible things in the marshalling area to upset my rivals.”

Source : "The Sports Factor" with Amanda Smith, www.abc.net.au. January 11, 2002.

“In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time.”