---
title: "5 Subprime-mortgage-loans Quotes By Michael Lewis"
description: "5 Subprime-mortgage-loans quotes by Michael Lewis. Plus more from Michael Lewis and more Subprime-mortgage-loans sayings from other authors."
image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f56/michael-lewis-705_customer_by-early-2005-all-the-big-wall-street-in_272379.png"
---

> [“By early 2005 all the big Wall Street investment banks were deep into the subprime game. Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/by-early-2005-all-the-big-wall-street-investment-banks-were-deep-into/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f56/michael-lewis-705_customer_by-early-2005-all-the-big-wall-street-in_272379.png)

> [“Long Beach Savings was the first existing bank to adopt what was called the “originate and sell” model. This proved such a…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/long-beach-savings-was-the-first-existing-bank-to-adopt-what-was/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fa9/michael-lewis-705_customer_long-beach-savings-was-the-first-existin_301474.jpg)

> [“Back in July 2003, he’d written them a long essay on the causes and consequences of what he took to be a…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/back-in-july-2003-he-d-written-them-a-long-essay-on-the-causes-and/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dde/michael-lewis-705_alan-greenspan_back-in-july-2003-he-d-written-them-a-lo_1874982.png)

> [“Where to find the borrowers with high FICO scores? Here the Wall Street bond trading desks exploited another blind spot in the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/where-to-find-the-borrowers-with-high-fico-scores-here-the-wall/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/02d/michael-lewis-705_point-of-view_where-to-find-the-borrowers-with-high-fi_2520948.jpg)

> [“It is ludicrous to believe that asset bubbles can only be recognized in hindsight,” he wrote. “There are specific identifiers that are…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/it-is-ludicrous-to-believe-that-asset-bubbles-can-only-be-recognized-2/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/8a8/michael-lewis-705_asset-bubble_it-is-ludicrous-to-believe-that-asset-bu_2812533.jpg)

## More by Michael Lewis

> [“Crucial decisions are made, today as thousands of years ago, in terms of the intuitive guesses and preferences of a few men in positions…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/crucial-decisions-are-made-today-as-thousands-of-years-ago-in-terms/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“You saw someone who reminded you of you, and then you looked for the reasons why you liked him. The”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/you-saw-someone-who-reminded-you-of-you-and-then-you-looked-for-the/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“At other places management says, ‘Well, gee, fellas, do we really want to bet the ranch on this deal?’ Lewie was not only willing…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/at-other-places-management-says-well-gee-fellas-do-we-really-want-to/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“BILLY WOULD SAY later that his wife left him because she was unnerved by his intensity—that she could even see it in his hands…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/billy-would-say-later-that-his-wife-left-him-because-she-was-unnerved/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“The great thing about baseball players, from the point of view of personal hygiene, is how seldom they break a sweat.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/the-great-thing-about-baseball-players-from-the-point-of-view-of/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [There was but one question he left unasked, and it vibrated between his lines: if gross miscalculations of a person's value could occur on…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/there-was-but-one-question-he-left-unasked-and-it-vibrated-between/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“The author refers to a player's affected nonchalance and comments he is, "too young to realize you are what you pretend to be.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/the-author-refers-to-a-player-s-affected-nonchalance-and-comments-he/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/a-banking-system-is-an-act-of-faith-it-survives-only-for-as-long-as/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [Some coaches believed they could judge a player's performance simply by watching it. In this they were deeply mistaken. The naked eye was an…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/some-coaches-believed-they-could-judge-a-player-s-performance-simply/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“No longer were the prices of ordinary mortgage bonds allowed to roam inefficiently, for they were now linked to the CMO market, in much…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/no-longer-were-the-prices-of-ordinary-mortgage-bonds-allowed-to-roam/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“The difference between Strauss and Ranieri?” says one trader still at Salomon. “That’s easy. Strauss wouldn’t stoop to use the men’s room on the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/the-difference-between-strauss-and-ranieri-says-one-trader-still-at/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“The only inexplicable aspect of the process was that economic theory (which is, after all, what economics students were supposed to know) served almost…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/the-only-inexplicable-aspect-of-the-process-was-that-economic-theory/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“It's not easy to stand apart from mass hysteria - to believe that most of what's in the financial news is wrong, to believe…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/it-s-not-easy-to-stand-apart-from-mass-hysteria-to-believe-that-most/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“Dont worry about where i am , i'll let you know when i get there .”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/dont-worry-about-where-i-am-i-ll-let-you-know-when-i-get-there/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

> [“Someone out there was using the fact that stock market orders arrived at different times at different exchanges to front-run orders from one market…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/someone-out-there-was-using-the-fact-that-stock-market-orders-arrived/)

[Michael Lewis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/michael-lewis/)

```json
{
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@graph": [
        {
            "@type": "ItemList",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/subprime-mortgage-loans/michael-lewis/#itemlist",
            "name": "5 Subprime-mortgage-loans Quotes By Michael Lewis",
            "numberOfItems": 5,
            "itemListElement": [
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 1,
                    "item": {
                        "@type": "Quotation",
                        "text": "“By early 2005 all the big Wall Street investment banks were deep into the subprime game. Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley all had what they termed “shelves” for their subprime wares, with strange names like HEAT and SAIL and GSAMP, that made it a bit more difficult for the general audience to see that these subprime bonds were being underwritten by Wall Street’s biggest names.”",
                        "creator": {
                            "@type": "Person",
                            "name": "Michael Lewis"
                        },
                        "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/by-early-2005-all-the-big-wall-street-investment-banks-were-deep-into/",
                        "image": {
                            "@type": "ImageObject",
                            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f56/michael-lewis-705_customer_by-early-2005-all-the-big-wall-street-in_272379.png",
                            "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f56/michael-lewis-705_customer_by-early-2005-all-the-big-wall-street-in_272379.png",
                            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f56/michael-lewis-705_customer_by-early-2005-all-the-big-wall-street-in_272379.png",
                            "width": 1080,
                            "height": 1080,
                            "caption": "“By early 2005 all the big Wall Street investment banks were deep into the subprime game. Bear Stearns…” — Michael Lewis",
                            "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
                            "creator": {
                                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 2,
                    "item": {
                        "@type": "Quotation",
                        "text": "“Long Beach Savings was the first existing bank to adopt what was called the “originate and sell” model. This proved such a hit—Wall Street would buy your loans, even if you would not!—that a new company, called B&C mortgage, was founded to do nothing but originate and sell.”",
                        "creator": {
                            "@type": "Person",
                            "name": "Michael Lewis"
                        },
                        "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/long-beach-savings-was-the-first-existing-bank-to-adopt-what-was/",
                        "image": {
                            "@type": "ImageObject",
                            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fa9/michael-lewis-705_customer_long-beach-savings-was-the-first-existin_301474.jpg",
                            "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fa9/michael-lewis-705_customer_long-beach-savings-was-the-first-existin_301474.jpg",
                            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/fa9/michael-lewis-705_customer_long-beach-savings-was-the-first-existin_301474.jpg",
                            "width": 1080,
                            "height": 1080,
                            "caption": "“Long Beach Savings was the first existing bank to adopt what was called the “originate and sell” model. This…” — Michael Lewis",
                            "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
                            "creator": {
                                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 3,
                    "item": {
                        "@type": "Quotation",
                        "text": "“Back in July 2003, he’d written them a long essay on the causes and consequences of what he took to be a likely housing crash: “Alan Greenspan assures us that home prices are not prone to bubbles—or major deflations—on any national scale,” he’d said. “This is ridiculous, of course…. In 1933, during the fourth year of the Great Depression, the United States found itself in the midst of a housing crisis that put housing starts at 10% of the level of 1925. Roughly half of all mortgage debt was in default. During the 1930s, housing prices collapsed nationwide by roughly 80%.”",
                        "creator": {
                            "@type": "Person",
                            "name": "Michael Lewis"
                        },
                        "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/back-in-july-2003-he-d-written-them-a-long-essay-on-the-causes-and/",
                        "image": {
                            "@type": "ImageObject",
                            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dde/michael-lewis-705_alan-greenspan_back-in-july-2003-he-d-written-them-a-lo_1874982.png",
                            "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dde/michael-lewis-705_alan-greenspan_back-in-july-2003-he-d-written-them-a-lo_1874982.png",
                            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/dde/michael-lewis-705_alan-greenspan_back-in-july-2003-he-d-written-them-a-lo_1874982.png",
                            "width": 1080,
                            "height": 1080,
                            "caption": "“Back in July 2003, he’d written them a long essay on the causes and consequences of what he took to be a…” — Michael Lewis",
                            "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
                            "creator": {
                                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 4,
                    "item": {
                        "@type": "Quotation",
                        "text": "“Where to find the borrowers with high FICO scores? Here the Wall Street bond trading desks exploited another blind spot in the rating agencies’ models. Apparently the agencies didn’t grasp the difference between a “thin-file” FICO score and a “thick-file” FICO score. A thin-file FICO score implied, as it sounds, a short credit history. The file was thin because the borrower hadn’t done much borrowing. Immigrants who had never failed to repay a debt, because they had never been given a loan, often had surprisingly high thin-file FICO scores. Thus a Jamaican baby nurse or Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 looking to borrow three-quarters of a million dollars, when filtered through the models at Moody’s and S&P, became suddenly more useful, from a credit-rigging point of view. They might actually improve the perceived quality of the pool of loans and increase the percentage that could be declared triple-A. The Mexican harvested strawberries; Wall Street harvested his FICO score.”",
                        "creator": {
                            "@type": "Person",
                            "name": "Michael Lewis"
                        },
                        "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/where-to-find-the-borrowers-with-high-fico-scores-here-the-wall/",
                        "image": {
                            "@type": "ImageObject",
                            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/02d/michael-lewis-705_point-of-view_where-to-find-the-borrowers-with-high-fi_2520948.jpg",
                            "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/02d/michael-lewis-705_point-of-view_where-to-find-the-borrowers-with-high-fi_2520948.jpg",
                            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/02d/michael-lewis-705_point-of-view_where-to-find-the-borrowers-with-high-fi_2520948.jpg",
                            "width": 1080,
                            "height": 1080,
                            "caption": "“Where to find the borrowers with high FICO scores? Here the Wall Street bond trading desks exploited another…” — Michael Lewis",
                            "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
                            "creator": {
                                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 5,
                    "item": {
                        "@type": "Quotation",
                        "text": "“It is ludicrous to believe that asset bubbles can only be recognized in hindsight,” he wrote. “There are specific identifiers that are entirely recognizable during the bubble’s inflation. One hallmark of mania is the rapid rise in the incidence and complexity of fraud…. The FBI reports mortgage-related fraud is up fivefold since 2000.” Bad behavior was no longer on the fringes of an otherwise sound economy; it was its central feature.”",
                        "creator": {
                            "@type": "Person",
                            "name": "Michael Lewis"
                        },
                        "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/michael-lewis/it-is-ludicrous-to-believe-that-asset-bubbles-can-only-be-recognized-2/",
                        "image": {
                            "@type": "ImageObject",
                            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/8a8/michael-lewis-705_asset-bubble_it-is-ludicrous-to-believe-that-asset-bu_2812533.jpg",
                            "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/8a8/michael-lewis-705_asset-bubble_it-is-ludicrous-to-believe-that-asset-bu_2812533.jpg",
                            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/8a8/michael-lewis-705_asset-bubble_it-is-ludicrous-to-believe-that-asset-bu_2812533.jpg",
                            "width": 1080,
                            "height": 1080,
                            "caption": "“It is ludicrous to believe that asset bubbles can only be recognized in hindsight,” he wrote. “There are…” — Michael Lewis",
                            "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
                            "creator": {
                                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "@type": "CollectionPage",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/subprime-mortgage-loans/michael-lewis/#webpage",
            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/subprime-mortgage-loans/michael-lewis/",
            "name": "Subprime-mortgage-loans Quotes by Michael Lewis",
            "isPartOf": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website"
            },
            "mainEntity": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/subprime-mortgage-loans/michael-lewis/#itemlist"
            },
            "primaryImageOfPage": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f56/michael-lewis-705_customer_by-early-2005-all-the-big-wall-street-in_272379.png"
            },
            "description": "5 Subprime-mortgage-loans quotes by Michael Lewis. Plus more from Michael Lewis and more Subprime-mortgage-loans sayings from other authors.",
            "breadcrumb": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/subprime-mortgage-loans/michael-lewis/#breadcrumb"
            }
        },
        {
            "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/subprime-mortgage-loans/michael-lewis/#breadcrumb",
            "itemListElement": [
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 1,
                    "name": "Home",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/"
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 2,
                    "name": "Quotes",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/"
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 3,
                    "name": "Topics",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/categories/"
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 4,
                    "name": "Subprime Mortgage Loans",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/subprime-mortgage-loans/"
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 5,
                    "name": "Michael Lewis",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/subprime-mortgage-loans/michael-lewis/"
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "@type": "WebSite",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website",
            "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/",
            "publisher": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization"
            }
        },
        {
            "@type": "Organization",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization",
            "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/",
            "logo": {
                "@type": "ImageObject",
                "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/themes/sq/assets/icons/icon-512.png",
                "width": 512,
                "height": 512
            }
        }
    ]
}
```
