The Big Short (2015) quotes

In 2006-7 a group of investors bet against the US mortgage market. In their research they discover how flawed and corrupt the market is.

Tell me the difference between stupid and illegal and I’ll have my wife’s brother arrested.
– Jared Vennett

I don’t get it. Why are they confessing?
– Mark Baum
They’re not confessing.
– Danny Moses
They’re bragging.
– Porter Collins

If we’re right, people lose homes. People lose jobs. People lose retirement savings, people lose pensions. You know what I hate about fucking banking? It reduces people to numbers. Here’s a number – every 1% unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die, did you know that?
– Ben Rickert

I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people.
– Mark Baum

“Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry.”
– Overheard at a Washington, D.C. bar

You’re completely sure of the math?
– Danny Moses
Look at him, that’s my quant.
– Jared Vennett
Your what?
– Mark Baum
My quantitative. My math specialist. Look at him, you notice anything different about him? Look at his face.
– Jared Vennett
That’s pretty racist.
– Mark Baum
Look at his eyes, I’ll give you a hint, his name is Yang. He won a national math competition in China he doesn’t even speak English! Yeah I’m sure of the math.
– Jared Vennett

That’s a nice haircut. Did you do it yourself?
– Michael Burry

Saints don’t live on Park Avenue.
– Cynthia Baum

We live in an era of fraud in America. Not just in banking, but in government, education, religion, food, even baseball… What bothers me ins’t that fraud is not nice. Or that fraud is mean. For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never, ever worked. Not once. Eventually you get caught, things go south. When the hell did we forget all that? I thought we were better than this, I really did.
– Mark Baum

And I’m getting madder and madder and I ask this guy how he sleeps at night knowing he’s ripping off working people and he just leaves. He doesn’t say a word. He just walks away from the lunch. So am I fucked up or is he?
– Mark Baum

Ok, I want you to walk back in there and very calmly, very politely tell the risk-assessors to fuck-off!
– Mark Baum: [on the phone]
Gentlemen, I just spoke with Mark Baum and he says to ‘fuck off’.
– Vinnie Daniel

Short everything that man has touched.
– Mark Baum

People hate to think about bad things happening so they always underestimate their likelihood.
– Jamie Shipley

I’m jacked! I’m jacked to the tits!
– Jared Vennett