James Chanos Quotes

At the heart of banking is a suicidal strategy. Banks take money from the public or each other on call, skim it for their own reward and then lock the rest up in volatile, insecure and illiquid loans that at times they cannot redeem without public aid.

I do think that the banking system is now in the most perilous state we've seen in over 70 years.

The bonus for bankers fragilizes the system. Someone has the upside at the expense of others.

Given the extent of the exposures of major banks around the world to A.I.G., and in light of the extreme fragility of the system, there was a significant risk that A.I.G.'s failure could have sparked a global banking panic.

Bailing out every bank that fails makes the system riskier, not safer.

The global financial crisis - missed by most analysts - shows that most forecasters are poor at pricing in economic/financial risks, let alone geopolitical ones.

The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.

Overpaid bankers taking big risks with other people’s money brought the world to its knees..

Complexity and interconnectedness matter as much as size in assessing risk in banking.

Our global economy is much more fragile than many of us realize.

The rich man's sons inherits cares; The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft, white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn.

The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.

With government deregulation and the triumph of financial liberalization, the dangers of systemic risks, the possibility of a financial tsunami, sharply increased.

We are taking a greater chance of having another crash at a time when the world is less capable of bearing the cost.

With all this consumer debt, business debt, government debt, smaller movements in interest rates have a magnified effect. a small movement can tip the boat.

In 2008 we came perilously close to killing money, exposing in the process how out of date money's infrastructure has become.

If we leave the European Union it's a risk to our economy - it's a risk to pensioners, it's a risk to homeowners, it's a risk to people in work.

Money is a hazard.

Deutsche Bank is a problem bank.

Bailouts may have been more tolerable in the early 1990s when they were rare and their use for a failing bank was uncertain. That is no longer the case.

Countries that are occasionally immature in their ability to manage their economic affairs as well as they should - and that includes most of them - are going to find that the world is at risk.

Prior to the 2008 recession, many financial institutions were engaging in 'proprietary lending,' where a bank would invest funds for its own gain instead of earning revenue through commission by trading on behalf of clients.

You look at the U.S. budget deficit, and you cannot help but feel that this is a serious accident waiting to happen. And not just a serious U.S. accident, but a serious global accident.

One of the big problems we had during the financial crisis was the intermingling of banks and holding companies and complex securities.

I wasn't born into money, and you never know when that money's going to stop coming in.