Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The lesson of 2008 is that ultimately our markets are driven by confidence.
Some billionaires like cars, yachts and private jets. Others like newspapers.
The rating agencies historically actually did a pretty good job rating regular bonds.
Whether a president can truly improve, or damage, an economy remains an open question.
It's the people who have an incentive to find the problem who usually find the problem.
In truth, the best Bitcoin can hope for is to be a second-rate version of gold, if that.
I'm not a real sports guy, but I check ESPN.com just so I know what people are talking about.
I don't sleep well. I'm a very nervous - by my nature - anxious, almost paranoid person and reporter.
In truth, a leader should either apologize, mean it and do something about it - or not apologize at all.
Tiptoeing on a tightrope past insider trading laws may be deft and clever, but it doesn't make it right.
Investors are sometimes too busy looking for profits to notice where the truth ends and the deception begins.
The failure of Lehman may have allowed the government to do more to prop up the economy than it otherwise could.
I would say that my whole career is effectively trying to be a storyteller within the context of financial news.
If I could only follow one person on Twitter, it would be Heidi Moore. She's a financial journalist at NPR's Marketplace.
Forget about banks that are too big to fail; the focus should be on cities, municipalities and countries that are too big to fail.
We talk about institutions that are too big to fail - I think the story is as much about people who think they are too big to fail.
The euphoria around economic booms often obscures the possibility for a bust, which explains why leaders typically miss the warning signs.
Unemployment in Florida peaked at 11.2 percent in 2009, higher than the national average, and the state was a center for home foreclosures.
One of Obama's first major acts as president was to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and some of the money in that bill went to Saft.
Wall Street's biggest fight with Obama was over the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which Obama signed into law in the summer of 2010.
I think you tell the story that has to be told. You tell the story that's the truth. You tell the story that readers will be interested in and should know about.
As a journalist, a big part of what you do is search for drama and conflict. And a lot of the backstory with 'Billions' is grounded in my journalistic background.
There's something called, 'resolution authority,' which gives the government the power to takeover a failing bank - something they didn't have pre-Lehman Brothers.
Great stories are still just great yarns. News remains the best human drama ever. Technology is not changing the story; it is just changing the way in which we deliver it.
When you can't lend or trade - and you can't invest with the leverage that juiced returns to support seven- and eight-figure bonuses - how exactly are you going to make money?
Wall Street is littered with clever plans to use financial instruments to change behavior - carbon trading, for example. Some have changed the world, and others failed miserably.
The blowback against a bailout of Lehman would have been fierce. It is often forgotten, but the prevailing wisdom the day after Lehman fell was that its collapse was a good thing.
Bitcoin, in the short or even long term, may turn out be a good investment in the same way that anything that is rare can be considered valuable. Like baseball cards. Or a Picasso.
I got my start in the 'New York Times' because I used to read Stuart Elliot, the advertising columns. I still do. And I read him so religiously, I wanted to work for him before I died.
Let's start with a basic question: Do we, as a country, want our most highly qualified employees from the private sector to pursue public service? The answer, I would imagine, should be yes.
My training really was at the 'New York Times,' you know. When I got there, I was literally supposed to stay there for five weeks, and I got lucky like nobody, you know, like nobody's business.
I think Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner shared the view that they shouldn't be in the business of bailouts, but you know, you're not in the business of bailouts until you frankly think you need to be.
What if lawmakers never spoke to their constituents? Oddly enough, that's exactly how corporate America operates. Shareholders vote for directors, but the directors rarely, if ever, communicate with them.
In many ways, education is a lousy business. Teachers are not normal economic actors; almost all of them work for less money than they might fetch in some other industry, given their skills and advanced degrees.
The economic meltdown that would define every aspect of Obama's economy came to a head well before he became president, of course, and so did the legislation that would be the basis for everything that came after.
The ethos on Wall Street has not changed, and that's not going to come from the corner office. That's going to come, for better or worse, from Washington, and the whole idea of greed is still good, that is still pervasive.
Traditionally, we think that people with ideas are innovators - that Silicon Valley is the world of ideas. But within the hedge-fund world, they believe that they are men of ideas - that the trade is unto itself one of ideas.
The greatest economic power might in fact remain in the hands of the Federal Reserve. Economists credit the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates at historic lows with helping to pump up the economy and bring unemployment down.
Hard paywalls will never work because, just like at a newsstand, the reader likes to browse the cover and a few articles before choosing to buy. Even if the material is truly unique, a consumer likes to try a little before buying.
The Saft America plant, a giant 235,000-square-foot mass of concrete, is a modern marvel: its roof covered in row upon row of solar panels, embodying the renewable future that the batteries manufactured within are meant to sustain.
Why do we have financial crises? Why do banks lose money? If history is any guide, it hasn't often been the result of speculative bets. It has been the result of banks making loans to individuals and businesses who can't pay them back.
I was always one of those people who would watch the Super Bowl as much for the sports as I did for the ads. I was always just sort of fascinated by the fact that when you turn on the TV, there was motion, there was moving pictures on it.
I'm probably a believer in abandoning too-big-to-fail firms or breaking them up in some way so that the system can try to take care of itself. I imagine you're not going to get there, and therefore, I suspect regulation is what's going to be required.
There are those on Wall Street and in the plutocracy who feel that Geithner is a hero who deftly steered the country from economic ruin. To many ordinary Americans, however, he is considered a Wall Street puppet and a servant of the so-called banksters.
I started, actually, in journalism when I was - well. I started at the 'New York Times' when I was 18 years old, actually, but really got into journalism when I was 15 years old and had started a sports magazine which was trying to become a national sports magazine.
In truth, Wall Street is in for a radical makeover. Fewer people, lower margins, lower risk, lower compensation - and ultimately, fewer talented people. It is likely to change the culture of an industry that for nearly a century has been the money center of the world.
I don't want to put words in Geithner's mouth, but I think he is generally against the revolving door of government officials taking jobs with companies that they have overseen or in roles that involve lobbying. At minimum, I'm pretty sure he felt that way about himself.
On TV at night, I DVR lots of programs - I use it more like a magazine rack flipping through shows than actually watching them in full. 'Charlie Rose,' 'Meet the Press,' '60 Minutes' are musts for me. I also DVR 'NBC's Nightly News' and 'The Chris Matthews Show' on Sunday.
By now, it seems as if everyone has already read Thomas L. Friedman's 'The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.' It changed the way we think about global business, competitiveness and the implication for far-flung economies, governments, education and more.
If I have a spare second, I usually catch up on the many magazines I'm behind on or watch the latest movies on demand that I usually missed at the theater. I love magazines. My top three: Graydon Carter's 'Vanity Fair', Adam Moss' 'New York magazine' and David Remnick's 'New Yorker.'