Paul Craig Roberts Quotes

Wall Street, the banks, and corporate America, has been able to call the shots here. They control our members of Congress and they get what they want.

The financial interests have captured the government institutions.

If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.

The wonder of this month's military procurement scandal is that it can still scandalize us. The practices that are being exposed—the revolving door between government and industry, the mutual backscratching between the military and the companies that build the weapons—aren't abuses of the system. They are the system.

Under Karl Rove’s leadership, crony capitalism became a Biblical injunction.

Washington is corporate occupied territory …. The two parties are fighting it out to see who will take orders from their corporate paymasters.

Unfortunately, public officials are largely controlled by the very corporations against which they should proceed.

One party is under the ironclad control of Wall Street and the other one caters to Wall Street.

There is a public perception that the Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street.

The FBI has always supported big business and big government.

Every economy exists, no matter what the level of democracy, has elements of crony capitalism. It's - given human nature and given the democratic structures, which we all, I assume, adhere to, that is an inevitable consequence.

Washington is dominated by big money.

American politicians are responsive almost solely to the interests and desires of their rich constituents and interest groups that primarily represent big business.

What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats.

Money often determines not only who gets elected, but what gets done. Which voices do lawmakers listen to, the banks or home owners, coal companies, or asthma sufferers, the CEOs or the unemployed?

Policy is no longer being written by politicians accountable to the American public. Instead, policies concerning the defense budget, deregulation, health care, public transportation, job training programs, and a host of other crucial areas are now largely written by lobbyists who represent mega corporations.

The problem is we have a Wall Street-to-Washington access of power that has controlled the political climate. The donor class feeds the political class who does the dance that the donor class wants. And the result is federal government keeps getting bigger.

Please don't begin to believe that the American political establishment is anything but a corrupt puppet of oligarchy.

We have allowed an unholy alliance of government - the new monarchy - and corporate influence - the new aristocracy - to take control of events in a way that would have made our Founders shudder.

The political battle is between big money combines who spend a thousand pounds or more on every constituency they fight… when they speak democracy, they don't mean government by the people...they mean financial democracy, in which money counts and nothing but money.

Something is systemically wrong with Congress today, and it's money, the pursuit of money, the endless pursuit of money, the virtual hourly pursuit of money, either to finance the perpetual campaign or to maintain a certain standard of living.

Members of state legislatures are owned by doctors and lawyers. That's why workers' compensation cannot be solved.

Money distorts the democratic process in a fundamental way.

He [Richard Nixon] is still the handmaiden of big business as he always has been.

This system stinks and every senator who participates in it knows it stinks. And the American people are right when they mistrust this system, when what matters most in seeking public office is not integrity, not ability, not judgment, not reason, not responsibility, not experience, not intelligence, but money …. Money dominates the system. Money infuses the system. Money is the system.