Richard Quest Quotes

Capitalism is in crisis.

The fall of Wall Street is for market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for communism.

Market capitalism survived and prospered after the boom-bust industrial revolution of the 19th century, and the Great Depression and world wars of the 20th century. It will recover from the financial panic of 2008-09 and Obamanomics.

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.

My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn't work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.

Although this crisis in some ways started in the United States, it is a global crisis. We bear a substantial share of the responsibility for what has happened, but factors that made the crisis so acute and so difficult to contain lie in a broader set of global forces that built up in the years before the start of our current troubles.

Wall Street has come a long way from the insider-dominated world that was blown apart by the Great Depression.

I'm not anti-Wall Street - I'm anti-distortions to free markets.

Trade will no longer lie at the mercy of ignorant and reckless politicians, or at the mercy, no less to be deprecated, of a few purse-proud, domineering, dictatorial bank directors, who care not what mischief they do if they can but perpetuate their own exclusive privileges.

It’s hard to be a fan of the free market these days when the free market has just driven the economy over the cliff.

Something is missing from Main Street: Trust in Wall Street

If you want to know why the towers of American capitalism are crumbling, I recommend reading 'The Creature from Jekyll Island' by G. Edward Griffin.

Throughout the 19th century, when there was a laissez-faire mentality and insufficient regulation, you had one crisis after another. Each crisis brought about some reform. That is how central banking developed.

The dominant economic approach of the last thirty years is now on its last legs. Letting the market rip and an indifference to inequality are now seen as important causes of the greatest economic crash since the 1930s.

The war to rein in Wall Street excess is never over.

The Fed is the major U.S. firefighter. It's not the Treasury. It's not the Congress. We certainly saw that vividly in 2008.

Conservatives have no understanding of modern capitalism. They have a distorted understanding of the traditional values they claim to defend.

Once again, the puppets on Capitol Hill are about to slam the Muppets on Main Street. The country still hasn't recovered from the Wall Street-induced financial cataclysm of 2008, yet Congress is preparing to enact the Orwellian 'JOBS Act' - a bill that should in fact be called the 'Return Fraud to Wall Street in One Easy Step Act.'

Everywhere you look, there's a hunger to put the ethos by which Wall Street thrives on trial.

Financial crises are an unfortunate but necessary consequence of modern capitalism.

Let us not be defeated by the tyranny of the world financial markets that threaten peace and democracy everywhere.

Capitalism has forced everyone to overoptimize in order to compete.

It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression.

Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system, to beat the market or at least find someone who will pay you a lot of money, 'cause they're convinced that there is a free lunch.

In a capitalist society, persons who create capital, like Michael Eisner, are given the staggering rewards.