Quotes About Crisis

2005 there would be $625 billion in subprime mortgage loans, $507 billion of which found its way into mortgage bonds. Half a trillion dollars in subprime mortgage–backed bonds in a single year.

The subprime mortgage market had a special talent for obscuring what needed to be clarified.

The people in a position to resolve the financial crisis were, of course, the very same people who had failed to foresee it:

Pope Benedict XVI was the first to predict the crisis in the global financial system… Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said. "The prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules can be found" in an article written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

No one cares about data when everything is going well," said Josh Wills, the former chief data engineer at Slack, who agreed to help. "People only care about data when the shit hits the fan. 'Oh my God, what's going on??? We need data!

By law the life-insurance companies were not required to pay on deaths caused by earthquakes. But in Japan the law often comes second–in 1923 the insurance companies were ordered to pay money they didn't owe. In a crisis no Japanese company is really private; the insurance companies have been effectively nationalized. They have been told to pay whatever they can without depleting their domestic-securities portfolios. It is their peculiar charm that they don't argue.

The CDC did many things. It published learned papers on health crises, after the fact. It managed, very carefully, public perception of itself. But when the shooting started, it leapt into the nearest hole, while others took fire.

The absence of pandemic prevention was another example of a deficiency in the system.

Nothing big happens until you close the schools. It's not like anything else. It's like a phase change. It's nonlinear. It's like when water temperature goes from thirty-three to thirty-two. When it goes from thirty-four to thirty-three, it's no big deal; one degree colder and it turns to ice.

The CDC does not know how to pull the fire alarm. In fact, there is no fire alarm in this country.

We kept saying, 'These banks are out of business.' But the government kept saving the banks," he said. "And right in the midst of this Iceland went broke.

Nineteen eighteen, said Carter. What happened then? asked Obama. Thirty percent of the population was infected, and two percent died

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.

Josh instead found himself trying to save Americans from their public-health system.

People only care about data when the shit hits the fan. 'Oh my God, what's going on??? We need data!

United States, with a bit more than 4 percent of the world's population, had a bit more than 20 percent of its COVID-19 deaths.

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.

The Great Influenza, a book by the historian John Barry about the 1918 flu pandemic.

The biggest problem the banks had was that they had lent roughly 30 billion euros to the Greek government—where it was stolen or squandered. In Greece the banks didn't sink the country. The country sank the banks.

Era como si fuéramos en un avión a diez mil metros que se hubiera averiado y Wachovia todavía tuviera unos cuantos paracaídas a la venta. Nadie más vendía ya paracaídas, pero en realidad tampoco nadie quería creer que se necesitaran. […] Después de eso, el mercado se cerró por completo.»

There are two ways to be a health officer," he said. "One is to pretend it's not happening.

There is going to be a calamity, and whenever there is a calamity, Merrill is there.

In Greece the banks didn't sink the country. The country sank the banks.

Cornwall had a problem more immediate than the collapse of society as we know it: the collapse of Bear Stearns.