Elizabeth Warren Quotes

In the case of Enron, we balance our positions all the time.

The Enron scandal is worthy of the highest level of scrutiny, both because of the enormity of the crimes that may have been committed and because of what the largest bankruptcy in American history has already begun to reveal about the weaknesses in our nation's corporate structures and regulatory oversight.

Not only is self-regulation largely a fantasy, but repeated scandals across multiple industries have proved that companies are fundamentally incapable of self-regulating for the greater good.

Ken Lay has, does and will continue to accept responsibility for the fall of Enron. He was the man at the controls. But failure is not a crime.

Larry, I spent probably most of my professional life helping to build Enron Corporation. I don't think there was anyone that was as shocked by the - by the collapse of the company as I was.

It would be a sorry world in which corporations engaged in fraud could pull the screen of the First Amendment over any investigation of their scheme.

Laws were changed and regulations repealed until an Enron can set sail without responsibility, supervision, or accountability.

Where there is flagrant abuse of corporate entities we must and will seek to tackle it.

Before Enron, I think people were a bit more naive about the way things worked, and I think Enron pulled the curtain back on unsavoury practices that turned out to be a lot more widespread.

The worst story I ever wrote was after the conviction of Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay. My co-author and I wrote a piece for 'Fortune' saying everything's going to be different now.

Washington told Wall Street, 'We're going to let y'all regulate yourselves.' The Republicans were in charge. They never said a word.

People are treating the Stewart case as seriously as Enron when it's really over trivia.

You can look at what I did in the Senate. I did introduce legislation to rein in compensation. I looked at ways that the shareholders would have more control over what was going on in that arena. And specifically said to Wall Street, that what they were doing in the mortgage market was bringing our country down.

They not only deregulated. They desupervised.

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.

You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in one sentence, what it does... it's illegal.

Opacity on extreme levels is not addressed anywhere, including Dodd-Frank.

Most of the big banks were shot through with short-termism, deceptive practices and self-dealing. We must institute basic changes in corporate governance and in management practice to restore responsibility and honesty for the sake of the economy and for the self-respect of the country.

Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.

It is always important that we have transparency, that we have shareholder protection. Then again, I think it is important that there are not so many regulations that management can't make a decision without asking a lawyer whether he can do it.

The single most remarkable (and revealing) fact of the Obama presidency may very well be the lack of a single prosecution of Wall Street executives for the massive fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis.

Regulators are a backstop: they don't own banks. The governance at the top of our leading banks has been shown to be lamentably weak. No one at the top of Barclays will take responsibility for systemic abuse.

I don't represent corporations.

If troubled companies want to explain away 2008 as a 'black swan,' then someone should take responsibility for creating the oil slick that seems to have tarred the entire flock!

Even President Bush has cited the need to outlaw the practice of corporations making loans to their officers. Strangely enough, when the President was a corporate officer, he took out several loans from the company.