Quotes from Michael Lewis

Kittu was fascinated that such a technically minded person could be so happy groping blindly toward big piles of money. "Jim Clark has a clarity of vision that is prompted by the purest form of greed," says Kittu.

The CDC had lots of great people, but it was at heart a massive university. "A peacetime institution in a wartime environment," Carter called it. Its people were good at figuring out precisely what had happened, but by the time they'd done it, the fighting was over.

she was struck by how private American forces of mercy were straining to offset America's public agents of cruelty.

As yet, there is no final reckoning of the wealth the Valley has created. Hundreds of billions of dollars, certainly; perhaps even trillions. In any case, 'The greatest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet,' as one local capitalist puts it. The

A big Wall Street bank's biggest advantage was its access to vast amounts of cheap risk capital and, with that, its ability to survive the ups and downs of a risky business. That meant little when the business wasn't risky and didn't require much capital. High-frequency traders went home every night with no position in the stock market. They traded in the market the way card counters in a casino played blackjack: They played only

Cities that intervened immediately after the arrival of the virus experienced far less disease and death.

If everyone on Wall Street abided by the rule's spirit, the rule would have established a new fairness in the U.S. stock market.

An engineer's idea of a joke is a practical joke, perhaps because a practical joke, unlike the less practical kind, needs to be designed. It requires the jokester to build the contraption to ensnare his victim.

American cities that caved to pressure from business interests to relax their social distancing rules experienced big second waves of disease.

That guy might look like Arnold but it can't possibly be Arnold because Arnold would never be out alone on a bike at seven in the morning, trying to commit suicide.

The American institutions built to manage risk and respond to a virus had been engaged in a weird simulation of crisis response that did not involve actually trying to stop the virus. "The greatest trick the CDC ever pulled was convincing the world containment wasn't possible," she said.

Al realizar predicciones y juicios en condiciones de incertidumbre, la gente no parece seguir el cálculo de probabilidades ni la teoría estadística de la predicción. Más bien se basa en un limitado número de heurísticas que a veces dan lugar a juicios razonables y otras veces conducen a graves y sistemáticos errores.

Even as she helped the team of software guys and former Obama officials build the model that persuaded Newsom to shut down the state, Charity had decided that she was leaving. As children, she and her older sister had a phrase to describe the unsettling sensation of fresh doubt about some situation or some person: black smoke. The black smoke had rolled into state government with the virus and never left.

Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for a short-term reward. What

people threw around when they wanted the conversation to end, and for brains to go dead, and for all questioning to cease.

People don't understand that a bungled transition becomes a bungled presidency.

any person with the brains to get into the IIT's and the gumption to get himself to the United States was capable of all manner of miracles.

there is no such thing as individual achievement. A quarterback throws an interception and it might be his own fault; but it might also be the fault of the receiver who ran the wrong route, or the blocker who allowed him to be hit as he threw. Twenty-two players are involved in every football play. To value precisely the activity of any one of them, i

Inside him a quality and a chemical—intelligence and testosterone—wrestled for hegemony.

A part of good science is to see what everyone else can see but think what no one else has ever said.

My Lehman interview was representative not just of my own experience, but of thousands of interviews conducted by a dozen investment banks on several dozen college campuses from about 1981 onwards.

Communicable diseases were the diseases that created crises. In an adjective she'd found a vessel for her life purpose.

The Indian engineers had the lust for the kill that Clark loved. They were ferociously, recklessly competitive.

When the systems depend on human vigilance, they will fail.