Rosabeth Moss Kanter Quotes

Corporate crime kills far more people and costs taxpayers far more money than street crime.

We have witnessed the most educated, successful, and monied professionals in the country put their companies - not to mention their own liberty - at risk by engaging in flagrant and foolhardy illegal conduct.

How does it happen that virtually every corporation in America has been found guilty of violating the law and not one CEO has got to jail?

I'm not sure most of the people that get caught up in the middle of a bubble can be described as irrational. It seems pretty rational to buy a house and flip it in the next few weeks at a profit when that's been happening for along time.

Are you getting a big kick out of the Enron scandal? I find this interesting that whenever a big crisis starts, people start showing up in church. So, Ken Lay shows up in church this weekend. Church officials are still looking for the collection plates.

Greece and the Greek people have recently had to deal with the harshest consequences of the global and European economic crisis. As an economy and as a society, we have had to experience a program of disastrous austerity which made the problems more acute instead of resolving them.

Nine million people - nine million people lost their jobs [in 2008]. Five million people lost their homes. And $13 trillion in family wealth was wiped out.Now, we have come back from that abyss. And it has not been easy.

The Great Depression was going on, so that the station and the streets teemed with homeless people, just as they do today. The newspapers were full of stories of worker layoffs and farm foreclosures and bank failures, just as they are today. All that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a Great Depression. We may even be hiding a Third World War.

Republicans don't like people to talk about depressions. You can hardly blame them for that. You remember the old saying: Don't talk about rope in the house where somebody has been hanged.

Things that are bad for business are bad for the people who work for business.

We got a lot of excellent people and businesses from Bear and WaMu. But Bear definitely was more painful. WaMu got us into Florida, California, and other states, which was a huge benefit - to expand and grow and add middle-market, private banking, investment banking, and other products, too.

Of course, speculation will always make a crisis worse. If there is a weak point, it will expose it.

Every coach, every executive, every leader: They all know right from wrong. Even those Enron guys. When someone uncovers a scandal in their company, I don't think they can say, "I didn't know that was going on." They're just saying they're too dumb to do their job! And if they really are too dumb, then why are they getting paid millions of dollars to do it? They know what's going on.

Goldman Sachs was one of those companies whose illegal activity helped destroy our economy and ruin the lives of millions of Americans. But this is what a rigged economy and a corrupt campaign finance system and a broken criminal justice is about. These guys are so powerful that not one of the executives on Wall Street has been charged with anything after paying, in this case of Goldman Sachs, a $5 billion fine.

The corporate scandals are getting bigger and bigger. In a speech on Wall Street, President Bush spoke out on corporate responsibility, and he warned executives not to cook the books. Afterwards, Martha Stewart said the correct term was to saute the books.

People want what they want. And I guess that is a reason we have this big credit card problem and a lot of these foreclosures.

The Irish turned in on themselves and bid up their own land prices in the most extraordinary ways... The Irish people stepped in and guaranteed the banks, and committed to repay sums they can't afford to repay, and essentially committed themselves to generations of suffering.

Portugal is not doing well economically. People are upset and angry. You can feel it on the street. You can tell in the way they drive. We're talking about one of the richest histories. We had an unbelievable empire, and so many maritime discoveries, and how is it that we are now reduced to this? But I still love the country.

Everybody is in trouble, including the up-and-coming economic miracles of China, Brazil or India.

I don't see (subprime mortgage market troubles) imposing a serious problem. I think it's going to be largely contained.

You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.

Our country has tremendous problems. We're a debtor nation.

The roots of the crisis in East Asia were in private sector decisions. The biggest problems were the misallocation of investment, most notably to speculative real estate, and risky financing, especially borrowing short-term debt on international markets.

The United States cannot continue to lose vast amounts of business, vast amounts of companies, and millions and millions of people losing their jobs.

A jury found former Enron sleezeballs Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling guilty of fraud and conspiracy. Ken Lay? That's not a good name to have when you're going to prison. And Kenny Boy ain't too good either. ... I guess in prison they'll have done to them what they did to the stockholders.