James Chanos Quotes & Sayings

“Our concerns about what we saw in Australia: an economy clearly tied to China has hitched its wagon to the tail of the tiger. In terms of the general complacency, what we heard over and over from investors and clients and potential clients is, 'yes, yes, there are some excesses, but the government will figure out a way.'”

“I've learned there's a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller. That difference is psychological and I think it falls into the realm of behavioral finance.”

“Dubai was a property bubble. Plain and simple. Go to Dubai and see what happened. It was... what I call it the 'Edifice complex' - it's just, we can grow by putting up lots and lots of buildings and trying to attract people to come here, stay here, and put up offices here and sooner or later, you put up too many.”

“Increasingly, the real estate developers can't get bank loans for their project financing in China. They're now going into the Hong Kong market to raise money in the bond market at very, very high rates, as high as 15, 20 percent.”

“What we define as a bubble is any kind of debt-fueled asset inflation where the cash flow generated by the asset itself - a rental property, office building, condo - does not cover the debt incurred to buy the asset. So you depend on a greater fool, if you will, to come in and buy at a higher price.”

“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.”

“If you're a short-seller, that's a cacophony of negative reinforcement. You're basically told that you're wrong in every way imaginable every day. It takes a certain type of individual to drown that noise and negative reinforcement out and to remind oneself that their work is accurate and what they're hearing is not.”

“Bubbles are best identified by credit excesses, not valuation excesses. And there's no bigger credit excess than in China.”

“There's almost 70 billion in square feet under construction in high rises in commercial, residential and light manufacturing. And we estimate about 30 billion square feet, and that's with a 'B,' is commercial, that we would just consider office space. To put that in perspective, that's a 5x5-foot cubicle for every man, woman and child in China.”

“People who lose money always need someone to blame.”