Tom Brokaw Quotes

It's impossible to translate Wall Street greed into one or two demands.

I believe that the whole idea of the consumer society is tottering. We've kept ourselves going by producing more and more goods, most of which people don't need. I'm anti-consumerism; I own four pairs of black Levis and that's it.

Wall Street has too much wealth and political power.

What we're seeing now is that greed is still alive and kicking, and banks are bigger than ever.

The post-crisis perception, at least in the media, appears to be one of Americans being held down by Wall Street, by big companies in the private sector, and by the wealthy. Capitalism is on trial. I see it a little differently. If a lender offers me free money, I do not have to take it.

The sustaining fantasy of Nolan's Batman films - which does chime uncomfortably with Romney -is that the excesses of finance capital can be curbed by a combination of philanthropy, off-the-books violence and symbolism.

This America has been the country of greed rather than the country of need.

The way the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed, and taken most of it into their own hands, is as good as Stalin or Hitler.

I'm for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?

Somewhere along the way to free-market capitalism, the United States became the most wasteful society on the planet.

I have problems with this very extreme form of capitalism where the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, where the focus is completely on the short term, and no one is thinking about the consequences.

For me, as I suspect for most people, there comes a point where you have enough. If you've got £20 million, why keep going until you've got £100 million or £1,000 million? Does anyone need another vast yacht or private jet or a house full of gold?

I don't have money. Monsanto has money.

Insider trading tells everybody at precisely the wrong time that everything is rigged, and only people who have a billion dollars and have access to and are best friends with people who are on boards of directors of major companies - they're the only ones who can make a true buck.

Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: 'It does nothing! It creates chaos! It's a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry!'

It has always been more expensive for the poor to borrow money. We see this in everything from mortgage rates to credit cards.

Money is the most corrosive aspect of life today because it means that all attention to detail is forgotten.

Who gets the risks? The risks are given to the consumer, the unsuspecting consumer and the poor work force. And who gets the benefits? The benefits are only for the corporations, for the money makers.

'Great Expectations' has been described as 'Dickens's harshest indictment of society.' Which it is. After all, it's about money. About not having enough money; about the fever of the getting of money; about having too much money; about the taint of money.

The American people are being victimized more than any free market would warrant.

Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up.

I think the sense of fairness in humans is very strongly developed, and that's why we react so strongly to all the bonuses received by Wall Street executives. We want to know why they deserve these benefits.

I don't think anyone went the polls and said, 'I am casting my vote to make sure that Wall Street has better chances to make bigger profits off the backs of the American people.'

There's been such a sense that there's one set of rules for trillion-dollar financial institutions and a different set for all the rest of us. It's so pervasive that it's not even hidden.

Corporate greed, where they need more and more and more, regardless of how much they already have, is ruining the economy of this country.