Financial Industry Quotes
Most popular financial industry quotes
By and large I don't think too much of finance professors. It is a field with witchcraft.
I don't think anyone should buy a bank if they don't have a feel for the bankers. Banking is a business that is a very dangerous place for an investor. Without deep insight, stay away.
Banks will not rein themselves in voluntarily. They need adult supervision.
We have monetized houses in this country in a way that's never occurred before. Ask Joe how he bought a new Cadillac—from borrowing on his house. . . . We have financial institutions, including those with big names, extending high-cost credit to the least able people. I find a lot of it revolting. Just because it's a free market doesn't mean it's honorable.
These crazy booms should be watched. Alan Greenspan didn't think so. He's a capable man but he's an idiot. You should not make him the father of all banking. His hero is Ayn Rand. It's an unlikely place to look for wisdom. A lot of people think that if an ax murderer goes around killing people in a free market it's all right.
We have a higher percentage of the intelligentsia engaged in buying and selling pieces of paper and promoting trading activity than in any past era. A lot of what I see now reminds me of Sodom and Gomorrah. You get activity feeding on itself, envy and imitation. When it happened in the past, there were bad consequences.
I do not think you can trust bankers to control themselves. They are like heroin addicts.
If you intelligently trade derivatives it's like a license to steal, so you can understand why they all want to do it . . . but what is the big plus in having everyone gamble with everyone else? I lived in a world with low gambling for decades when I was younger and I liked it better. I think it was better for the country. It's like having thousands of professional poker players. What damn good are they doing for anybody?
The whole world is better when you don't reduce engineering standards in finance. We skipped a total disaster by a hair's breadth. . . . I'm a big fan of the people who took us through the crisis. I'm not a big fan of the people who caused the crisis. Some of them deserve to be in the lowest circle of hell.
AIG is a lot like GE. It is a fabulously successful insurance operator, and with success it morphed into a massive carry business—borrowing a lot of money at one price and investing it at another price. AIG was a big operator that was a lot like GE Credit. We never owned either because even the best and wisest people make us nervous in great big credit operations with swollen balance sheets. It just makes me nervous, that many people borrowing so many billions.
Even the best banks drift with the times and do stupid things, but I suspect Wells Fargo will face up to it better.
A big percentage of Caltech grads are going into finance. . . . They'll make a lot of money by clobbering customers who aren't as smart as them. It's a mistake. I look at this in terms of losses from the diversion of our best talent going into some money-grubbing exercise.
A man does not deserve huge amounts of pay for creating tiny spreads on huge amounts of money. Any idiot can do it. And, as a matter of fact, many idiots do do it.
When Hitler was in his bunker before he shot himself, he said, 'This isn't my fault. The German people just don't appreciate me enough.' That's the attitude of a lot of bankers. They think their silliness is necessary. Banks will not rein themselves in voluntarily. You need adult supervision.
To say accounting for derivatives in America is a sewer is an insult to sewage.
Finance is the art of passing currency from hand to hand until it finally disappears.
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls-Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.
Recommending something to be held for thirty years is a level of self- sacrifice you'll rarely see in a monastery, let alone a brokerage house.
Wall Street makes its money on activity. You make your money on inactivity.
To many on Wall Street, both companies and stocks are seen only as raw materials for trades.
I'd be a bum on the street with a tin cup if the markets were efficient.
As far as I am concerned, the stock market doesn't exist. It is only there as a reference to see if anybody is offering to do anything foolish.
We believe that according the name investors to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.
Our banking system grew up by accident; and whenever something happens by accident, it becomes a religion.
This is the twilight of the banks. It would be a more cheerful spectacle if we could envision the dawn of the institutions that will replace them.
A financier is a pawnbroker with imagination.
Banking is a career from which no man really recovers.
A banker is a man who lends you an umbrella when the weather is fair, and takes it away from you when it rains.
Let Wall Street have a nightmare and the whole country has to help get them back in bed again.
![I do not regard a [stock] broker as a member of the human race. - Honoré de Balzac quote.](/img/q/32/22332A-i-do-not-regard-a-stock-broker-as-member-human-honore-de-balzac.png)
I do not regard a [stock] broker as a member of the human race.
We all have a stake in the economy. Everybody is hurt by inflation. If you really wanted to examine who percentage-wise is hurt the most in their incomes, it is the Wall Street brokers.
Stocks do not move unless they are pushed.
