Pete Buttigieg Quotes

Not only is self-regulation largely a fantasy, but repeated scandals across multiple industries have proved that companies are fundamentally incapable of self-regulating for the greater good.

You don't want another Enron? Here's your law: If a company, can't explain, in one sentence, what it does... it's illegal.

Only the corporation that shirks from the light would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be over-sensitive.

Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism …. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.

Where there is flagrant abuse of corporate entities we must and will seek to tackle it.

In America, we no longer have an institutionalized, organized way of calling business to task - of taking them to account for what they've done - and this is especially true in the cultural realm.

Executives can no longer hide behind the corporate veil. They need to be accountable for what their companies do, because entities are responsible for socially irresponsible behavior.

Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.

It is always important that we have transparency, that we have shareholder protection. Then again, I think it is important that there are not so many regulations that management can't make a decision without asking a lawyer whether he can do it.

How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means?

The history of business has shown that companies usually only regulate themselves if they're forced to by legislation, or out of self-interest - often in the shape of a marketable message that will help sell more products.

I don't represent corporations.

There is a broad movement that has been holding companies accountable on human rights for a long time.

There's been a sea change in our focus on corporate ethics. We've made more progress in the last three years than the previous 30.

Business is always looking to avoid the toughest norms. But some do it in a civilized way, while others push it using uncivilized, brazen methods.

People should be encouraged by things like awards given for corporate governance practices.

Shareholders have the right and obligation to set the parameters of corporate behavior within which management pursues profit.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

I do not dread these corporations as instruments of power to destroy this country, because there are a thousand agencies which can regulate, restrain and control them.

If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal limitations and duties, they would have less cause to complain of the unlawful limitations of their rights or of violent interference with their operations.

… strong national regulation of interstate corporations

Let business oversee itself.

Like the government, corporations must be bound with the chains of the Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights.

It would be a sorry world in which corporations engaged in fraud could pull the screen of the First Amendment over any investigation of their scheme.

Apple exists as a corporate entity with the protections provided by U.S. laws, but it cannot be allowed to pick and choose when to abide by those laws as it sees fit.