James Chanos Quotes

I will not let anyone tell me we must spend more money. This crisis did not come about because we issued too little money but because we created economic growth with too much money and it was not sustainable growth.

We've suffered a 'Ponzification' of the economy in recent years, as bubbles have built up and then burst, and each time we act as though it's the first time.

Throughout the '90s and early 2000s, our financial industry and governments leaned on a snake-oil mirage of wealth creation, a bubble predicated on the obvious falsehood that things could only get better.

Bitcoins are not a real investment; they are bets inside a casino. If the price goes back up, don't be fooled. In the parlance of popping investment bubbles, it's something called a 'dead-cat bounce.' People who are desperate to keep the game going rush back in, hoping to bring the price back up, but it never lasts.

A lot of the state-sponsored growth in India was just too fast. You went from cradle to Nirvana in a short period of time.

We just went through the biggest housing bubble in history and now housing prices are starting to go up again. I don’t know what to make of that.

In a bubble, eventually people start saying, 'Wait a minute... these prices are way too high! What is anyone buying anymore? What could they possibly be thinking?' And then there's a correction and a bursting.

If you go into what I call a bubble boom, every bubble bursts.

We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble. And we better be awfully careful.

Without calling the overall national issue a bubble, it's pretty clear that it's an unsustainable underlying pattern.

The Irish turned in on themselves and bid up their own land prices in the most extraordinary ways... The Irish people stepped in and guaranteed the banks, and committed to repay sums they can't afford to repay, and essentially committed themselves to generations of suffering.

Unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it's often painful.

I would say the biggest single cause was we had an incredible residential real estate bubble.

We do not live in an economy, we live in a Ponzi scheme.

I don't even know what that means. People who get credit have to get it from somewhere. Does a credit bubble mean that people save too much during that period? I don't know what a credit bubble means. I don't even know what a bubble means. These words have become popular. I don't think they have any meaning.

The financial crisis appears to be mostly behind us, and the economy seems to have stabilized and is expanding again.

When interest rates are low we have conditions for asset bubbles to develop, and they are developing at the moment. The ultimate asset bubble is gold.

Speculation in land may be necessary to capitalism, but speculative orgies periodically become a quagmire of destruction for capital itself.

All the risky things that were happening back in ’06 and ‘07 are back again to the same level, if not more. So we are in the beginning of a credit bubble, but just the beginning.

Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, gee, I hope it does collapse because then I can go in and buy some and make some money. Well, it did collapse.

I don't think the market can keep going up. In the U.S., we see real estate not going up.. houses are selling at lower prices. You can't have anything going up 10 percent to 20 percent to 30 percent indefinitely.

We have the worst revival of an economy since the Great Depression. And believe me: We're in a bubble right now.

Greenspan's eventual explanation for the growing gap between stock prices and actual productivity was that, fortuitously, the laws of nature had changed -- humanity had reached a happy stage of history where bullshit could be used as rocket fuel.

But 300 million Americans, their lending institutions, their government, their media, all believed that house prices were going to go up consistently. And that got billed into a $20 trillion residential home market. Lending was done based on it, and everybody did a lot of foolish things.

The recession is over." This phrase has been used twice a year since 1973 by government leaders throughout the West. Its meaning is unclear. See: Depression.