Joe Nocera > Quotes

“IRA funds became a form of play money for the middle class... Because the pool of capital that made up an IRA could not be withdrawn for twenty or thirty years, many people viewed their IRAs as containing money they could experiment with. They could use an IRA to buy their first stock or their first mutual fund. They could put in in a money market fund first, and then, as they got bolder - and the bull market became more irresistible - shift some of it into something a little riskier. IRAs gave people a way to try on the stock and bond markets for size, to see how they felt, and to become slowly comfortable with the idea of investing. The knowledge that the money couldn't easily be withdrawn acted as a psychological safety net, allowing investors to feel as though they could take a chance or two. If they made a mistake, they reasoned, there was still time to recoup - several decades, perhaps.Over time, many people came to believe that it as imperative to maximize the returns they were getting on their IRA account, even at the risk of taking a loss. How else would they ever have enough to retire on? This, surely, is the classic definition of investment capital.”
― Joe Nocera, A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class

“Though they did not instantly grasp the ultimate significance of the money market fund, Brown and Bent understood completely that they were making the first real assault on Regulation Q. Here is Henry Brown describing the moment of epiphany: “It was a frustrating time,” he wrote in an unpublished chronicle, of their disastrous first two years in business. (“Bent calculated that the proprietor of the hot dog stand at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 53rd Street was making twice as much money as either of them.”) In a moment of desperation, Bent one day asked Brown:”
― Joe Nocera, A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class

“Inside the White House, Kadlec had a reputation for “shoot first, aim later.”
― Joe Nocera, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

“Once Trump got his hands around this promising idea, he basically strangled it.”
― Joe Nocera

“Thank God for Steven,” Azar told a colleague. “If we had had to go to the Hill for a supplemental appropriation, Warp Speed would not have happened.”
― Joe Nocera, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

“If the pandemic first revealed the limits of the expertise at the once-revered CDC, now it was revealing the limitations of the expertise at the Federal Reserve. Both were exacerbated by the same problem that had gripped so much of America: an unwillingness to hear outside voices that expressed disagreement.”
― Joe Nocera, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

“In a study of twenty-nine high-income countries, the United States experienced the largest decline in life expectancy in 2020, and unlike European countries the United States did not recover in 2021. America was also the only country whose lowered life span was driven mainly by deaths among people under sixty. Whether deaths were caused by COVID-19 or the effects of the response to COVID-19 (such as increased suicides or untreated illnesses), America was far less resilient than comparable countries.”
― Joe Nocera, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

“His core business still is self-promotion.”
― Joe Nocera

“This was so even though, as everyone knows, the United States spends far more on health care than any other industrialized country—an average of almost $13,000 per person per year, according to CMS, over $5,000 more than any other high-income nation.”
― Joe Nocera, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

“What was very striking was that they were thinking about biological threats the same way they thought about other kinds of terrorism—something would go bang,” recalls Margaret Hamburg, then an assistant secretary at HHS[*] and one of the few officials who understood pandemics. “I mean, an FBI agent literally said to me that if there was a biological attack, they would go in and diffuse the pathogens.”
― Joe Nocera, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

“To Slaoui, vaccines held out more promise to help people than politics ever could. He’d often tell people that vaccines had saved more lives than any other tool in history.”
― Joe Nocera, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind

“As the number of credit card holders grew, and as inflation imposed its relentless logic, people began to gain a new awareness of the implications that came with certain credit card actions. In particular, they began to understand the meaning of the word 'float.' When a customer used a credit card to buy something at the beginning of the billing cycle, and then didn't pay the bill until the tail end of the 'grace period,' the bank had, in essence, 'floated' the customer a month-long interest-free loan. Once again, savvier customers figured out how to maximize this advantage, learning the precise moment to make big purchases so that the bill would not come due for forty-five or even sixty days.”
― Joe Nocera, A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class

“There is a reason this all happened in the United States. As Akash Tewari, a biotechnology analyst with Jefferies, puts it, “If we didn’t have the U.S. system, we wouldn’t have the vaccines.”
― Joe Nocera, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind