Quotes & Sayings About Wall Street Greed

Wall Street is broken for sure because it succumbed to greed and corruption and pure speculation with no values. — Deepak Chopra

The ultimate goal of those who blame workers for Wall Street's economic crisis is to unravel the fabric of our common life in pursuit of greed and power. — Richard Trumka

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. — Dana Spiotta

We have seen that in this country in the last few years, particularly on Wall Street, with the rise of the old human frailty of greed. This occurs when people begin to serve only their own needs to the detriment of everyone else. — Lee R. Raymond

Greed has increasingly become a virtue among Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs in the U.S. Nowhere else in the world do CEOs insist on receiving compensation as high compared to what their employees earn. — Simon Mainwaring

He believed there was nothing essentially unAmerican about greed or lust - hey, those qualities were encouraged everywhere from Wall Street to Capitol Hill. — Jeffery Deaver

Truman charged that Republicans were "Wall Street reactionaries," "gluttons of privilege," "bloodsuckers," and "plunderers." GOP legislators in the 80th Congress, he said, were "tools of the most reactionary elements" who would "skim the cream from our natural resources to satisfy their own greed." Dismissing Dewey, "whose name rhymes with hooey," Truman said, "If you send another Republican Congress to Washington, you're a bigger bunch of suckers than I think you are." "Give 'em hell, Harry!" the people shouted back. "Pour it on!"59 — James T. Patterson

this integration of Jefferson and Jesus is in many ways how members of the evangelical right can oppose abortion yet ignore the needs of disenfranchised members of society, how they can rage against sexual revolutions and offer little critique on economic greed or mass consumption, and how they can keep labor unions and government in check while not doing the same to Wall Street, insurance companies, and other big American businesses. Of course, much of today's evangelical political doctrine has become so radical, so driven by fear and hyperbole that it's more or less a parody of the doctrines of Thomas Jefferson and Jesus, a culture where the poor in spirit are not blessed, they are marginalized and expected to care for themselves. — Matthew Paul Turner

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

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms - greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind. (Gordon Gekko, in Wall Street. — Sidney Sheldon

There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning. — Warren Buffett

Brad Green, almost overnight, became the poster boy for the common Wall Street tale - proving once again that greed, most definitely, kills. Giving away about 99% of his fortune was also front page news, but Green barely blinked at having to scrape by with only $200 million. The government seized all five of his homes, his three boats, two jets, a helicopter, 14 cars, and all of his assets except the $200 million he stashed for a rainy day in an offshore bank account. — Phil Wohl

You can see it in terms of the obsession on Wall Street with not just profits but greed, more profit, more profit. — Cornel West

In five days, you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor. — Barack Obama

Was greed that broke Wall Street, not the lack of financial algorithms. — Joan D. Chittister

People talk about Wall Street greed, but one of the things many people don't understand is that there are a lot of organizations that have been the recipient of largess from the same Wall Street. — Geoffrey Canada

I used to love that movie Wall Street and the line
'Greed is good.' Honestly, the only thing greed got me was five years in
prison, the loss of my wife and possessions, and the company I loved,"
Brad said slumping in his chair with his head down. — Phil Wohl

Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America. — Bernie Sanders

The ethos on Wall Street has not changed, and that's not going to come from the corner office. That's going to come, for better or worse, from Washington, and the whole idea of greed is still good, that is still pervasive. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

Cause of the financial crisis was "simple. Greed on both sides - greed of investors and the greed of the bankers." I thought it was more complicated. Greed on Wall Street was a given - almost an obligation. The problem was the system of incentives that channeled the greed. The line between gambling and investing is artificial and thin. — Michael Lewis

We didn't become the most prosperous country in the world just by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn't come this far by letting the special interests run wild. We didn't do it just by gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell. — Barack Obama

I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy. — Warren Buffett

People who are tired of K Street corruption and Wall Street greed are ready for Main Street Values. — Mike Huckabee

Do not blame people and their attitudes: the problem is not corruption or greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt. The solution is not, "Main Street, not Wall Street," but to change the system where Main Street cannot function without Wall Street. — Slavoj Zizek

I think what the secretary Hillary Clinton has recognized is the American people are extremely angry about the power of Wall Street, the greed, the illegal behavior of Wall Street. — Bernie Sanders

Listen in close, Wall Street Conquistadors, you're spreading like vapor up through people's floors, you're moving en masse under the cracks of our doors and grabbing our children to work in your stores, feeding the needy to make them your whores, but you need to remember the grave you're digging is yours. — Trevor D. Richardson

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. — Matt Taibbi

Money is like a child - rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there. — Lemony Snicket

His figures should have been through the roof; the economy was still unsteady, the president was hog-tied by his own compromised idealism, and Davis and his kind had succeeded in vilifying unions, immigrants, and welfare cases, making them carry the can for the greed of bankers and Wall Street sharks, thereby somehow convincing sane people that the poorest and weakest in the nation were responsible for most of its ills. What never ceased to amaze Tate was that many of those same individuals (the dirt-poor, the unemployed, the welfare recipients) listened to his show, even as he castigated those (the union organizers, the bleeding-heart liberals) who most wanted to help them. — John Connolly

We have seen the results of unrestrained greed, corruption, and manipulation on Wall Street, financial mismanagement in the halls of government, fraud and perversion at the highest levels of both church and state. Many people sense the possibility of an even greater unraveling in the world. We are constantly confronted by the realities of new problems in this age of crisis. — Billy Graham

The nature of any human being, certainly anyone on Wall Street, is 'the better deal you give the customer, the worse deal it is for you'. — Bernard Madoff

You know who's also joining the Wall Street protesters? Kanye West. That's a real good idea
a guy with diamonds in his teeth protesting greed. — David Letterman

It is important to remember that, as Ken Auletta wrote in his definitive Greed and Glory on Wall Street, "no reporter can with 100 percent accuracy re-create events that occurred some time before. Memories play tricks on participants, the more so when the outcome has become clear. A reporter tries to guard against inaccuracies by checking with a variety of sources, but it is useful for a reader - and an author - to be humbled by this journalistic limitation. — Bryan Burrough

Oh, I'm all about small business. I think what we've learned from big business and big Wall Street is that unchecked greed and the creation of false value gets us all in trouble. If we look at the American economy, who's really creating value? It's the small businesses. — Robert Herjavec