Last Man Standing Quotes

“An astute market seer, Jim Grant, describes the Fed’s near-abandon at the printing press: “Frostbite victims tend not to dwell on the summertime perils of heatstroke.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“I once heard someone respond to the question of how one can be successful by saying, ‘You have to be in the right place at the right time,’” says analyst Mike Mayo, who moved to Calyon Securities in March 2009. “When asked how to do that, the response was ‘You have to be in a lot of places a lot of the time.’ Those two deals are where Jamie’s image—and that of JPMorgan Chase—translated into actual transactions. This is now the go-to bank when regulators pick up the phone. It would not surprise me in this environment if Jamie Dimon gets the first call in the next unusual situation we might find ourselves in.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“Ever a student of history, Dimon sent Paulson a note including a citation from a speech Theodore Roosevelt made in Paris in 1910: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“(As his predecessor John Pierpont Morgan had said about a banker’s reputation at the Pujo hearings in front of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1912, “[It] is his most valuable possession; it is the result of years of faith and honorable dealing and, while it may be quickly lost, once lost cannot be restored for a long time, if ever.”)”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“There is one financial commandment that cannot be violated: Do not borrow short to invest long—particularly against illiquid, long-term assets.” “You know what sinks companies?” he asked an audience in late 2008. “Financing illiquid assets short.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“In moving his bank out of the way of the oncoming subprime train, Dimon proved to be an exception to the great economist John Maynard Keynes’s cynical observation that a “sound banker … is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.” Dimon would not be ruined along with his fellows.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“There has never been much debate as to whether Weill or Dimon possesses more raw intellectual firepower; it is Dimon, no question. Sandy Weill, on the other hand, is proof that you should never underestimate the man who overestimates himself—at least not when all the stars are aligned in his favor: cheap financing, a rising market, and a fawning business press.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“All of Wall Street was about to find out what traders meant by the well-known maxim that relative value funds “eat like chickens and shit like elephants.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“Dimon also gave Paul a piece of advice he didn’t quite understand at the time but has since come to appreciate. “This might be counterintuitive for you,” Dimon said. “But it’s more important to do 10 things and get eight of them right than to do five and get them all right.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“On a single sheet of 8½ by 11 paper, Dimon kept a number of smaller handwritten lists, including “Things I Owe People” and “Things People Owe Me.” Even as computers began to take over most parts of day-today life in the financial industry, Dimon has continued with his crinkled list to this very day, systematically attacking every single obligation on it with his ruthless efficiency.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“As in the Jazz Age,” writes Ron Chernow in The House of Morgan, “much of the era’s financial prestidigitation seemed premised on an unspoken assumption of perpetual prosperity, an end to cyclical economic fluctuations, and a curious faith in the Federal Reserve Board’s ability to avert disaster.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“As often occurs with Wall Street alchemy, a good idea started to be misused—and a product initially devised to insulate against risk soon morphed into a device that actually concentrated dangers.” Money was still cheap in”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“harangued”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“Run your business knowing it might be sunny, it might be stormy, or in fact it might be a hurricane,” he said. “And be honest about how bad a hurricane might be.” The goal was not only to earn high returns at the top of the cycle but also to avoid giving them back at the bottom.”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase

“mundane”
― Duff McDonald, Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase