Robert Reich Quotes

Candidly, I believe most corporations actually don't mind big government.

I don't believe in a price on carbon, because the government is going to control it and they're going to fail.

If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions.

I want to make clear that we respect the role of government in our legal andeconomic system.

I want to say something, and it may sound harsh, not to you, but to the American people. In a sense, in my view, the business model of Wall Street is fraud. It's fraud. I believe that corruption is rampant, and the fact that major bank after major bank has reached multi billion dollar settlements with the United States government when we have a weak regulator system tells me that not only did we have to bail them out once, if we don't start breaking them up, we're going to have to bail them out again, and I do not want to see that happen.

I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

In America we believe there ought to be limits on government.

[D]ecade after decade, through taxes and regulations, governments at all levels took ever-increasing control over people's lives, wealth, and property. The control grew exponentially, decade after decade. The rationale was that the control was necessary -- for society, for the poor, for the nation, even for freedom itself. Americans continued living their life of the lie: they continued believing that the more control government exercised over their lives and property, the freer they became.

We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

The general public believes that if a health claim is on the label the government backs that up, ... This sells food products, no question.

The longer I operated on Wall Street the more distrustful I became of tips and inside information of every kind. Given time, I believe that inside information can break the Bank of England

I believe in corporations. They are indispensable instruments of our modern civilization. But I believe they should be so regulated that they shall act for the interests of the community as a whole.

I've always been a ... believer in good regulation.

We believe that part of the answer lies in pricing energy on the basis of its full costs to society. One reason we use energy so lavishly today is that the price of energy does not include all of the social costs of producing it. The costs incurred in protecting the environment and the health and safety of workers, for example, are part of the real costs of producing energy-but they are not now all included in the price of the product.

Today the U.S. government can demand the nation-wide recall of defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals, and foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves.

It's hard to argue with the government. Remember, they are they run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, so they must know a thing or two about satisfying women.

Wall Street is perhaps the most powerful economic and political force in this country. You have companies like Goldman Sachs, who just recently paid a settlement fine with the federal government for $5 billion for defrauding investors.

Environmental regulation looked like it was going to be under serious attack, and they were giving all of those speeches about getting government off people's backs.

Where you have complexity, by nature you can have fraud and mistakes. You'll have more of that than in a company that shovels sand from a river and sells it. This will always be true of financial companies, including ones run by governments. If you want accurate numbers from financial companies, you're in the wrong world.

[I]t is the reason alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government.

The question is how do you do it [more consumer protection] so that it actually works that way? And that takes analysis, and sometimes collaboration between government and business, to understand how that works.

What do you think the appropriate role of government is in society? The way I look at this job is, you want me to do X? Well, is the private sector doing X with any kind of success? Because if they are, I'd rather have them do it than have us do it.

The passions, therefore, not the reason, of the public would sit in judgment. But it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.

Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.

I have more government than I want, more government than I need, more government than I can afford.