Leslie Cockburn Quotes
It's a very enclosed world on Wall Street.
Cockburn, Leslie. "Meet the 2009 Tribeca Filmmakers: 'American Casino' Director Leslie Cockburn." IndieWire, Penske Media Corporation, 14 Apr. 2009.
Jefferson, who was so brilliant and farsighted with respect to so many things from agriculture to government management had one great weakness. He really did not understand and generally disliked, banking, finance, industry, large manufacturing. His famous disagreements with Alexander Hamilton were mostly over these areas in which Hamilton was so effective at creating America with a strong national economy. Between them, America was started off in the right direction in all areas.
Addressing Theodore Roosevelt in 1896:
Arguably, for most of American History, most of the “smartest” people contributed to manufacturing, construction, research and development—activities that produce things that are wanted and/or needed. However, Wall Street began attracting and paying for some of the smartest people in the society, who when they engaged in finance—not only contributed less to manufacturing, but began to create highly complex financial instruments and procedures that few people could understand and with which regulators have difficulty understanding. These and the other schemes of financing have been major factors in the economic problems that have beset the economy including the meltdown of 2008 and the subsequent Great Rescission.
Despite this, he recommended that the average person should participate in some limited ways.
Trump himself was known for being quite greedy and this admission was made before the Wall Street firms had been shown to be as greedy as they were during the aftermath of the 2008 economic meltdown recession when Wall Street Executives had their entire industry bailed out by the average taxpayer. Then they demanded their multi-million dollar bonuses while a large proportion of the people whose taxes bailed them out, were put out of work themselves by the greed, risk and profligacy of Wall Street.
For many general government regulations—labor, environment, non discrimination—the small business has a proportionately heavier burden of compliance. So large businesses have always been able to count on small business to lobby against regulation and for deregulation. However, when it comes to financial regulation such as the Dodd-Frank regulations essentially apply to large businesses. As a matter of fact, small businesses were on many ways the most frequent victims of the large banks and investment bank excesses in the Meltdown of 2008. Before most of the regulations could even take effect, the financial industry was already trying to get small business to lobby to roll back the protective regulations preventing future meltdowns and bank failure resulting from loose regulation and greedy irresponsible financial industry behavior. The President campaigned to convince the small business not to support the finance industry over their usual “knee jerk” reaction to any regulation.
Leslie Cockburn is an American investigative journalist, and filmmaker. Her investigative television segments have aired on CBS, NBC, PBS Frontline, and 60 Minutes. She has won an Emmy Award, The Hillman Prize, Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the George Polk Award.
