Wall Street Quotes

“In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.”
― Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

“Millionaires don't use Astrology, billionaires do.”
― J.P. Morgan

“I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.”
― Warren Buffett

“The CDO was, in effect, a credit laundering service for the residents of Lower Middle Class America. For Wall Street it was a machine that turned lead into gold.”
― Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

“When you’re a conservative Republican, you never think people are making money by ripping other people off,” he said. His mind was now fully open to the possibility. “I now realized there was an entire industry, called consumer finance, that basically existed to rip people off.”
― Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

“Sir Gerald Moore: I was at dinner last evening, and halfway through the pudding, this four-year-old child came alone, dragging a little toy cart. And on the cart was a fresh turd. Her own, I suppose. The parents just shook their heads and smiled. I've made a big investment in you, Peter. Time and money, and it's not working. Now, I could just shake my head and smile. But in my house, when a turd appears, we throw it out. We dispose of it. We flush it away. We don't put it on the table and call it caviar.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities

“I thought instead of a good rule for survival on Wall Street: Never agree to anything proposed on someone else's boat or you'll regret in in the morning.”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street

“The mistake our politicians so often make with these industry leaders is in thinking they are interested in, or respectful of, the power of government. All they want is to keep stealing. If you can offer them the government’s seal of approval on that, they’ll take it. But if you can’t, well, they’ll take that too.”
― Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

“While the financial crisis destroyed careers and reputations, and left many more bruised and battered, it also left the survivors with a genuine sense of invulnerability at having made it back from the brink. Still missing in the current environment is a genuine sense of humility.”
― Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

“But land is land, and it's safer than the stocks and bonds of Wall Street swindlers.”
― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

“Wisdom, itself, is often an abstraction associated not with fact or reality but with the man who asserts it and the manner of its assertion.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929

“I spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service . . . And during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

Thus, I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.

I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

Our boys were sent off to die with beautiful ideals painted in front of them. No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason they were marching off to kill and die.”
― General Smedley Butler

“A credit default swap was confusing mainly because it wasn’t really a swap at all. It was an insurance policy, typically on a corporate bond, with semiannual premium payments and a fixed term. For instance, you might pay $200,000 a year to buy a ten-year credit default swap on $100 million in General Electric bonds. The most you could lose was $2 million: $200,000 a year for ten years. The most you could make was $100 million, if General Electric defaulted on its debt any time in the next ten years and bondholders recovered nothing. It was a zero-sum bet: If you made $100 million, the guy who had sold you the credit default swap lost $100 million. It was also an asymmetric bet, like laying down money on a number in roulette. The most you could lose were the chips you put on the table; but if your number came up you made thirty, forty, even fifty times your money.”
― Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

“We were taking out mortgages we couldn’t afford because they were camouflaged to look as if we had a reasonable chance of paying them back. Banks then changed the bankruptcy laws so that we could not get out of our obligations once the rates changed. Lastly, they sold us back our own mortgages, shifting back to us any of the risk through our money-market accounts and pension funds.”
― Douglas Rushkoff, Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back

“Once you know how an illusion is performed, you cannot go back to being tricked by it.”
― Christopher Manske, Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS

“There are specific ways the system actually is rigged and distorted so that our perception of our money is manipulated, very similar to how a stage magician does illusions. And also, like those stage tricks, these
financial manipulations are easy to see through with just a little bit of education and focus.”
― Christopher Manske, Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS

“If you’ve ever thought that it shouldn’t be so hard to examine your investment portfolio or hold your financial advisor accountable, you’re right. The system distorts your view of your money in the same way that a magician stacks the deck against the audience. It’s not evil or bad, but once you know how the magician does the illusion, you simply cannot be tricked so easily anymore. And once we all are in on the trick, the
financial industry will need to improve, because the old, tired illusions won’t work anymore.”
― Christopher Manske, Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS

“Deception and misdirection are acceptable in a magic show, but they are not at all appropriate in the arena of finance. The way we look at our investments and what we see when we examine our portfolios are both important because our view determines how well we
navigate toward our financial goals.”
― Christopher Manske, Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS

“Wall Street works hard to make sure we focus on growing our net worth, but is that truly our goal? Is “more and more” really the answer, or are you being tricked into being a consumer who asks the wrong questions?”
― Christopher Manske, Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS

“Magicians the world over love to make people’s money disappear because it’s an easy way to raise tension and arouse curiosity”
― Christopher Manske, Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS

“Se è corretta la mia ipotesi che il capitale cloud sta prevalendo sul capitale terrestre, risucchiando sempre più rendita cloud dalla catena del valore globale, allora l'Europa è in grossi guai. Perché non è la Cina. Non ha una sola azienda Big Tech che possa competere con quelle della Silicon Valley e i suoi sistemi finanziari sono in tutto e per tutto dipendenti da Wall Street.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Tecnofeudalesimo: Cosa ha ucciso il capitalismo

“Forget Wall Street; India is a Gold Street.”
― Dipti Dhakul, Quote: +/-

“David saw the AI Revolution and online stock trading as potential solutions to the economic challenges faced by Black women and Black men. He genuinely believed that the reparations sought by Black people for the injustices of slavery and other crimes against their humanity are waiting patiently to be claimed in one place: Wall Street.”
― David L. Wadley

“For years, we have been told that bankers were paid so much because they were cleverer than the rest of us. Now, it turns out you were not clever at all, and we are all suffering for your stupidity.”
― Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

“Globalist proclamations can be seen not as mere disposable rhetoric but as an ideology with the force to shape a firm's perception and goals.”
― Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

“Investment banks induce corporations to cater, even manipulate, their balance sheet and other financial numbers to meet Wall Street expectations”
― Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

“The person is made up of flexible collection of assets; a person is proprietor of his or her self as a portfolio”
― Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

“In a world where corporations are foremost concerned with stock prices, the primary beneficiaries of this conflation are the institutions aligned with the stock market and their executives”
― Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

“Wall Street's contradictory approach to shareholder value and bull markets sets the stage for a financial crisis.”
― Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street

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