Mike Farrell Quotes

I don't think anyone would argue with the notion that there have been serious abuses on Wall Street.

Enron had already collapsed and filed for bankruptcy protection by the beginning of 2002. But despite complaints from short sellers that corporations had used accounting gimmickry to inflate their profits, many investors thought the crisis at Enron was an isolated case.

In the movie 'Wall Street' I play Gordon Gekko, a greedy corporate executive who cheated to profit while innocent investors lost their savings. The movie was fiction, but the problem is real.

Something is missing from Main Street: Trust in Wall Street

To a large extent, equity investors put their hard-earned capital into the hands of management and count on it being employed skilfully and honestly. When that doesn't happen, losses typically follow.

Was I believer in Enron Corporation? Yes, sir, I was.

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.

Because the sad fact is that the Enron Corporation and others manipulated with unfortunately great effect the energy market in the West Coast starting in 2000.

Wall Street is greedy, reckless and they operate illegally. That's fine. But what do you do?

Things that have happened with Enron and companies like that, where they've squandered their employees' pension funds, I think it has brought a new level of anxiety. People don't feel like they can trust their employer.

Wall Street wants to keep its schemes too complicated to understand so that the roulette wheel can keep turning.

I agree that there are some bad apples on Wall Street. I spent about ten years exposing corporate and financial fraud for 'Barron's' magazine and I found a lot to write about.

What transpired at Semgroup was no less than a $500 billion fraud on the people of the world.

We did not investigate Wall Street because we were troubled by large institutions making a lot of money; we took action to stop a blatant fraud that was ripping of small investors.

We will continue to hold accountable financial institutions that, in the pursuit of their own financial interests, misuse public funds and cause harm to hard working Americans.

Corporate trading is vicious in principle. The directors of such companies, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own … Negligence and profusion must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company

The motto of the old order in the City of London was, 'My word is my bond,' but the financial crisis revealed a culture quite alien to that heritage. The stewards of people's money were revealed to have been speculators with it.

We must investigate without fear or favour the so-called 'accounting irregularities' that cause turmoil in the markets and wipe billions off the investments of ordinary South Africans.

I'm not going to let Wall Street get away with murder. Wall Street has caused tremendous problems for us.

I have accused L.B. Management of failing to report to me, and I've told L.B. Management the money is missing, and it could very well be embezzled.

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

Buying only what you know can end in disaster. Just think about Enron's employees and business partners, the 'locals' who bought lots of its stock because they thought they were in the know.

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

Millions have been taken from me. If you are not on top of it and you make a lot of money, and you trust business managers, then, yes, money will be taken from you.

On Wall Street, fraudulent schemes tend to thrive during economic booms, and to blow up when times turn tough.