Derivatives Quotes

• What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so.

  Alan Greenspan

  Business, Years, Risk

  "Alan Greenspan: The Oracle Or The Master Of Disaster?" by Thomas B. Edsall, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 22, 2009.

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• Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.

  Warren Buffett

  Mass Destruction, Investing, Weapons

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.78, John Wiley & Sons

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• Derivatives are like sex. It's not who we're sleeping with, it's who they're sleeping with that's the problem.

  Warren Buffett

  Sex, Sleep, Problem

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• We've used derivatives for many, many years. I don't think derivatives are evil, per se, I think they are dangerous.

  Warren Buffett

  Thinking, Years, Evil

  "Oracle Of Omaha Says President Obama Must Step Up". Interview with Paul Tharp, www.nypost.com. March 10, 2009.

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• By far the most significant event in finance during the past decade has been the extraordinary development and expansion of financial derivatives.

  Alan Greenspan

  Past, Expansion, Events

  Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan, www.federalreserve.gov. March 19, 1999.

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• We should probably stop trading derivatives, anything more complex than regular options ... I am an options trader, and I don't understand options. How do you want a regulator to understand them?

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Business, Want, Finance

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• I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system.

  Warren Buffett

  Party, Views, Bombs

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.74, John Wiley & Sons

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• From the 1990s onward, the financial sector created a vast array of instruments designed to separate investors from their money, financial derivatives of an ever-increasing level of complexity. At some point, this complexity reached a point where even the creators of the derivatives themselves didn't understand them.

  John L. Casti

  Levels, Financial, Instruments

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Derivatives in and of themselves are not evil. There's nothing evil about how they're traded, how they're accounted for, and how they're financed, like any other financial instrument, if done properly.

  James Chanos

  Evil, Done, Financial

  "Q&A With Jim Chanos Part I: 'Greece Is A Prelude'". Interview with Vince Veneziani, www.businessinsider.com. April 13, 2010.

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• Derivatives are a huge, complex issue.

  Judd Gregg

  Issues, Complexes, Huge

  "Senator Judd Gregg on Financial Regulation". "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren, www.realclearpolitics.com. April 19, 2010.

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• Life can be lived at a remove. You trade in futures, and then you trade in derivatives of futures. Banks make more money trading derivatives than they do trading actual commodities.

  Sebastian Faulks

  Commodity, More Money, Trading

  "The many selves of Sebastian" by Geraldine Bedell, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2008.

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• Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade.

  Charlie Munger

  Two, Degenerates, Sides

  Source: www.calculatedriskblog.com

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• In our view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction carrying dangers that, while latent, are potentially lethal.

  Warren Buffett

  Business, Mass Destruction, Views

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• A lot of songs are derivative of each other.

  Tori Amos

  Song

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• Derivatives serve practically no purpose except to enrich bankers through opaque pricing and to deceive investors through off-the-balance-sheet accounting.

  James Rickards

  Balance, Bankers, Purpose

  James Rickards (2014). “The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System”, p.14, Penguin

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• The use of a growing array of derivatives and the related application of more-sophisticated approaches to measuring and managing risk are key factors underpinning the greater resilience of our largest financial institutions... Derivatives have permitted the unbundling of financial risks.

  Alan Greenspan

  Keys, Risk, Resilience

  Alan Greenspan's address to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Forty-first Annual Conference on Bank Structure in Chicago, Illinois, www.federalreserve.gov. May 5, 2005.

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• The model used by Wall Street to price trillions of dollar's worth of derivatives thought of the financial world as an orderly, continuous process. But the world was not continuous; it changed discontinuously, and often by accident.

  Michael Lewis

  Wall, World, Dollars

  "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine". Book by Michael Lewis, March 15, 2010.

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• I guess after Dances With Wolves they probably tried some derivative westerns, and if they didn't work, they said the western is dead and moved on to something else

  Tom Selleck

  Hypnosis, Moved On, Said

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• I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading.

  Charles Kuralt

  Reading, Believe, Writing

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• When I evaluate a candidate, one of the most important criteria is what I call “the first derivative.” Is this person learning? Is this candidate moving forward, or have they stagnated.

  Eric Sink

  Moving, Important, Firsts

  Eric Sink (2006). “Eric Sink on the Business of Software”, p.103, Apress

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• I think, my generation, it's hard to have hope when you got a $700-trillion derivatives debt to pay and a bubble about to explode and $500 trillion worth of GDP.

  Shia LaBeouf

  Thinking, Gdp, Generations

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• Actually, I take it as a compliment. Diva is a derivative of divine. That's quite a title to carry around.

  Calista Flockhart

  Titles, Compliment, Divine

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• There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry- architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter.

  Julia Child

  Art, Sculpture, Four

  Julia Child, Alex Prud'homme (2006). “My Life in France”, p.145, Anchor

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• Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

  Jamie Lee Curtis

  Mother, Women, Media

  "Jamie Lee Curtis Comes Clean". Good Housekeeping Interview, www.goodhousekeeping.com. September 3, 2010.

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• I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as a derivative of consciousness.

  Max Planck

  Fundamentals, Matter, Consciousness

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