Banker Best Quotes

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.

A NATION'S GREATNESS DEPENDS ON ITS LEADER To vastly improve your country and truly make it great again, start by choosing a better leader. Do not let the media or the establishment make you pick from the people they choose, but instead choose from those they do not pick. Pick a leader from among the people who is heart-driven, one who identifies with the common man on the street and understands what the country needs on every level. Do not pick a leader who is only money-driven and does not understand or identify with the common man, but only what corporations need on every level. Pick a peacemaker. One who unites, not divides. A cultured leader who supports the arts and true freedom of speech, not censorship. Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist. Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labor when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies. Most importantly, a great leader must serve the best interests of the people first, not those of multinational corporations. Human life should never be sacrificed for monetary profit. There are no exceptions. In addition, a leader should always be open to criticism, not silencing dissent. Any leader who does not tolerate criticism from the public is afraid of their dirty hands to be revealed under heavy light. And such a leader is dangerous, because they only feel secure in the darkness. Only a leader who is free from corruption welcomes scrutiny; for scrutiny allows a good leader to be an even greater leader. And lastly, pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader's greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.

for what justice is there in this: that a nobleman, a goldsmith, a banker, or any other man, that either does nothing at all, or, at best, is employed in things that are of no use to the public, should live in great luxury and splendour upon what is so ill acquired, and a mean man, a carter, a smith, or a ploughman, that works harder even than the beasts themselves, and is employed in labours so necessary, that no commonwealth could hold out a year without them, can only earn so poor a livelihood and must lead so miserable a life, that the condition of the beasts is much better than theirs? 

Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes -- or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist -- not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist.

He had learned how to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that poverty was blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons.

The only dream I ever had was the dream of New York itself, and for me, from the minute I touched down in this city, that was enough. It became the best teacher I ever had. If your mother is anything like mine, after all, there are a lot of important things she probably didn't teach you: how to use a vibrator; how to go to a loan shark and pull a loan at 17 percent that's due in thirty days; how to hire your first divorce attorney; what to look for in a doula (a birth coach) should you find yourself alone and pregnant. My mother never taught me how to date three people at the same time or how to interview a nanny or what to wear in an ashram in India or how to meditate. She also failed to mention crotchless underwear, how to make my first down payment on an apartment, the benefits of renting verses owning, and the difference between a slant-6 engine and a V-8 (in case I wanted to get a muscle car), not to mention how to employ a team of people to help me with my life, from trainers to hair colorists to nutritionists to shrinks. (Luckily, New York became one of many other moms I am to have in my lifetime.) So many mothers say they want their daughters to be independent, but what they really hope is that they'll find a well-compensated banker or lawyer and settle down between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-eight in Greenwich, Darien, or That Town, USA, to raise babies, do the grocery shopping, and work out in relative comfort for the rest of their lives. I know this because I employ their daughters. They raise us to think they want us to have careers, and they send us to college, but even they don't really believe women can be autonomous and take care of themselves.

But my best friend from college was silent for a long time. She, of all of my friends, had seen the parade of sad wrecks through my life, date after bad date after bad boyfriend. She was the one who'd picked up the pieces after the musician, the investment banker, the humanitarian who was human to everyone but me. When at last she spoke, she said, Oh, hell. And, after that: Hallelujah.

To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal.

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary. Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history. Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people. At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95). Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

AI might similarly help groom the best detectives, bankers, and soldiers in history.

You need a man to support, inspire. . .understand you. Help you be the best person you can be, banker, mother, both, whatever. And until you find a man you trust enough to do that, why settle?’ I

Loan restructuring may be explored as a collaborative solution between commercial bankers and businesses facing financial challenges. In the event of crises, it may be the best option for everyone.

Thirty years on, things have changes to the extent that Wayne Rooney could comfortably afford to employ the best-paid banker in Britain full-time, if he could see any purpose or momentary amusement in doing so.

In some circumstances, a focus on extrinsic rewards (money) can actually diminish effort. Most (or at least many) teachers enter their profession not because of the money but because of their love for children and their dedication to teaching. The best teachers could have earned far higher incomes if they had gone to banking. It is almost insulting to assume that they are not doing what they can to help their students learn, and that by paying them an extra $500 or $1,500, they would exert greater effort. Indeed, incentive pay can be corrosive: it reminds teachers of how bad their pay is, and those who are led thereby to focus on money may be induced to find a better paying job, leaving behind only those for whom teaching is the only alternative. (Of course, if teachers perceive themselves to be badly paid, that will undermine morale, and that will have adverse incentive effects)

I am not a capitalist in the simplistic left/right sense. But I do believe in the power of the global free-market economy and in using capitalist tools. I believe in the power of teh free market and the power of capital in the marketplace. I also believe that providing unemployment benefits is not the best way to address poverty. The able-bodied poor don't wan tor need charity. The dole only increases their misery, robs them of incentive and, more important, of self-respect.

 Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.

Our best friends and our worst enemies are our thoughts. A thought can do us more good than a doctor or a banker or a faithful friend. It can also do us more harm than a brick.

There’s a best time for everything – including the acquisition of capital.

Can I buy you a drink?” was most often accompanied by “I’m a banker” or “I’m just here on business.” The latter was code for “I’ve got a wife at home but we can make some sort of arrangement.

we learned the importance of picking fresh young people to run our branches. Surprisingly, people without previous work experience of any kind are often best suited for this. Previous work experience distracts new workers from the ideals and unique procedures of Grameen. Many

Isn't there a flaw in the logic of that phrase - speak truth to power? It assumes that power doesn't know the truth. But power knows the truth just as well, if not better, than the powerless know the truth. Enron knows what it's doing. We don't have to tell it what it's doing. We have to tell other people what Enron is doing. Similarly, the people who are building the dams know what they're doing. The contractors know how much they're stealing. The bureaucrats know how much they're getting in bribes. Power knows the truth. There isn't any doubt about that. It is really about telling the story. Good fiction is the truest thing that ever there was. Facts are not necessarily the only truths. Facts can be fiddled with by economists and bankers. There are other kinds of truth. It's about telling the story. As a writer, that's the best thing I can do. It's not just about digging up facts.

For more than a century, ideological extremists, at either end of the political spectrum, have seized upon well-publicized incidents, such as my encounter with Castro, to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal, working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists,' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. “We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years......It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.

The Mad Gardener's Song He thought he saw an Elephant, That practised on a fife: He looked again, and found it was A letter from his wife. 'At length I realise,' he said, 'The bitterness of Life!' He thought he saw a Buffalo Upon the chimney-piece: He looked again, and found it was His Sister's Husband's Niece. 'Unless you leave this house,' he said, 'I'll send for the Police!' He thought he saw a Rattlesnake That questioned him in Greek: He looked again, and found it was The Middle of Next Week. 'The one thing I regret,' he said, 'Is that it cannot speak!' He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk Descending from the bus: He looked again, and found it was A Hippopotamus. 'If this should stay to dine,' he said, 'There won't be much for us!' He thought he saw a Kangaroo That worked a coffee-mill: He looked again, and found it was A Vegetable-Pill. 'Were I to swallow this,' he said, 'I should be very ill!' He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four That stood beside his bed: He looked again, and found it was A Bear without a Head. 'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing! It's waiting to be fed!' He thought he saw an Albatross That fluttered round the lamp: He looked again, and found it was A Penny-Postage Stamp. 'You'd best be getting home,' he said: 'The nights are very damp!' He thought he saw a Garden-Door That opened with a key: He looked again, and found it was A Double Rule of Three: 'And all its mystery,' he said, 'Is clear as day to me!' He thought he saw a Argument That proved he was the Pope: He looked again, and found it was A Bar of Mottled Soap. 'A fact so dread,' he faintly said, 'Extinguishes all hope!

To me, it doesn’t make sense. The poorest of the poor work twelve hours a day. They need to sell and earn income to eat. They have every reason to pay you back, just to take another loan and live another day! That is the best security you can have—their life.” The manager shook his head. “You are an idealist, Professor. You live with books and theories.” “But

with zero fillings, revealed by the so-so joke—“Have you heard the news about Schrödinger’s Cat? It died today; wait—it didn’t, did, didn’t, did …”; high-volume discourse on who’s the best Bond; on Gilmour and Waters and Syd; on hyperreality; dollar-pound parity; Sartre, Bart Simpson, Barthes’s myths; “Make mine a double”; George Michael’s stubble; “Like, music expired with the Smiths”; urbane and entitled, for the most part, my peers; their eyes, hopes, and futures all starry; fetal think-tankers, judges, and bankers in statu pupillari; they’re sprung from the loins of the global elite (or they damn well soon will be); power and money, like Pooh Bear and honey, stick fast—I don’t knock it, it’s me; and speaking of loins, “Has anyone told

God entered the yellow church on the disabled ramp. He was in a wheelchair too; He had once lost a woman too. He was silvery. Not the cheap, glittery silver of a banker’s BMW, but a muted, matte silver. Once, as He was gliding among the silvery stars with his silvery beloved, a gang of golden gods attacked them. When they were kids, God had once beaten one of them up, a short, skinny golden god who had now grown up and returned with his friends. The golden gods beat Him with golden clubs of sunlight and didn’t stop until they’d broken every bone in His divine body. It took Him years to recuperate. His beloved never did. She remained a vegetable. She could see and hear everything, but she couldn’t say a word. The silvery God decided to create a species in His own image so she could watch it to pass the time. That species really did resemble Him: battered and victimized like Him. And His silvery beloved stared wide-eyed at the members of that species for hours, stared and didn’t even shed a tear. 'What do you think,' the silvery God asked the yellow priest in frustration, 'that I created all of you like this because it's what I wanted? Because I'm some kind of pervert or sadist who enjoys all this suffering? I created you like this because this is what I know. It's the best I can do.

Berry’s investigation was a searing indictment of how church officials in Louisiana buried reports of sexual abuse of minors and did their best to pay off victims to keep them silent. By the time his story ran, the tiny Lafayette diocese in which Gauthe had committed his crimes was deeply in the red from $4.2 million in confidential settlements to the families of nine victims, and $114 million in pending claims in another eleven lawsuits.

Most Berlin nightclubs aren’t like the American kind. Security is light, rules are lax. Generally there is no bottle service, no VIP section, and, Berghain aside, no velvet rope. In this respect, they bear little resemblance to, say, Studio 54, which, glorious as it may have been, begat a stratified style that metastasized into the models-and-bankers Maybach-and-Cristal rat race that deflected a generation away from the clubbing life in the U.S.

The Buried Bishop’s a gridlocked scrum, an all-you-can-eat of youth: ‘Stephen Hawking and the Dalai Lama, right; they posit a unified truth’; short denim skirts, Gap and Next shirts, Kurt Cobain cardigans, black Levi’s; ‘Did you see that oversexed pig by the loos, undressing me with his eyes?’; that song by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl booms in my diaphragm and knees; ‘Like, my only charity shop bargains were headlice, scabies, and fleas’; a fug of hairspray, sweat and Lynx, Chanel No. 5, and smoke; well-tended teeth with zero fillings, revealed by the so-so joke — ‘Have you heard the news about Schrodinger’s Cat? It died today; wait — it didn’t, did, didn’t, did…’; high-volume discourse on who’s the best Bond … Sartre, Bart Simpson, Barthes’s myths; ‘Make mine a double’; George Michael’s stubble; ‘Like, music expired with the Smiths’; and futures all starry; fetal think-tankers, judges, and bankers…power and money, like Pooh Bear and honey, stick fast — I don’t knock it, it’s me; and speaking of loins, ‘Has anyone told you you look like Demi Moore from Ghost?’; roses are red and violets are blue, I’ve a surplus of butter and Ness is warm toast.

As I said, to put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. We strive to be ourselves. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t be firemen, bankers, or doctors — but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal...In short, he has not dedicated his life to reaching a pre-defined goal, but he has rather chosen a way of life he knows he will enjoy. The goal is absolutely secondary: it is the functioning toward the goal which is important.

Why do these people crave fame? Why do any of us? Well, I’d argue it’s not about money. If it were our tabloids would be devoted to the lives and times of bankers. I think we all want to leave a legacy. We want to be remembered. We want to be Great.... In short, Alexander [the Great] was Great because others decided he was Great, because they chose to admire and emulate him. ... We made Alexander Great, just as today we make people great when we admire them and try to emulate them. History has traditionally been in the business of finding and celebrating great men, and only occasionally great women, but this obsession with Greatness is troubling to me. It wrongly implies, first, history is made primarily by men and secondly, that history is made primarily by celebrated people, which of course makes us all want to be celebrities. Thankfully we’ve left behind the idea that the best way to become an icon is to butcher people and conquer a lot of land, but the ideals that we’ve embraced instead aren’t necessarily worth celebrating either. All of which is to say we decide what to worship and what to care about and what to pay attention to. We decide whether to care about [so-called ‘celebrities’]. Alexander couldn’t make history in a vacuum, and neither can anyone else.

Twenty years ago, I saw a shooter, went by the name Kid Crossdraw, I believe, though everyone just called her ‘The Kid.’ ” Tracy stopped. The Banker smiled and continued. “I saw her in Olympia. Best shooter I ever saw, until today. Never saw her again after that, though. She had a father and a sister that were pretty good too. You wouldn’t happen to have heard of her, would you?” “I have,” Tracy said. “But you’re mistaken.” “What about?” “She’s still the best shooter.” The Banker played with an end of his mustache. “I’d love to see it. Do you know where she might be competing next?” “I do,” Tracy said. “But you’re going to have to wait a bit. She’s shooting at higher targets now.

No profession, trade, or calling, is overcrowded in the upper story. Wherever you find the most honest and intelligent merchant or banker, or the best lawyer, the best doctor, the best clergyman, the best shoemaker, carpenter, or anything else, that man is most sought for, and has always enough to do. As a nation, Americans are too superficial—they are striving to get rich quickly, and do not generally do their business as substantially and thoroughly as they should, but whoever excels all others in his own line, if his habits are good and his integrity undoubted, cannot fail to secure abundant patronage and the wealth that naturally follows. Let your motto then always be "Excelsior," for by living up to it there is no such word as fail

So, there were seaweed people and sky people. In time the seaweed people and the sky people found attraction in each other, and intermarried and became the Irish. That’s the short version. That’s why some of us are always longing for sky and some are of us are longing for the sea, and some, like my father, were both. We’re a race of elsewhere people. That’s what makes us the best saints and the best poets and the best musicians and the world’s worst bankers. That’s why wherever you go you’ll see some of us – and it makes no difference if the place is soft and warm and lovely and there’s not a thing anyone could find wrong with it, there’ll always be what Jimmy the Yank calls A Hankering. It’s in the eyes. The idea of the better home. Some of us have it worse than others. My father had it running in the rivers of him.

We’d be walking downtown, and I’d hear, “Chip. Hey, Chip!” and I’d turn to see a person approaching us who, frankly, might have scared me if I was walking downtown by myself. Chip wouldn’t be scared. He’d know the guy by name: “James! How’s it going, brother?” It seemed as if every homeless guy in Waco knew Chip Gaines. On the flip side, every banker in Waco knew Chip too. And he talked to those two very different groups of people the same way. There was never any difference in Chip’s demeanor. His enthusiasm for life and work and people was just infectious, and he surprised me with it again and again. At least once a day I caught myself thinking, Wow, this guy! Best of all, as happy as Chip Gaines was, he seemed happiest around me. I’m a generally happy person. My mom says I was a happy baby. But it’s a fact--I was always happiest around Jo. And I still am.

Vocational guidance officers speak about scores necessary to get into university, how to calculate them, what band might be needed to get into various institutions, what countries they can offer information on, what courses are available. The post-school future they outline is entirely about getting into a university. There is nothing on alternative futures. The parents around me seem fine with this. Presumably they have academically successful children and have bought into the notion that raising a child is primarily about getting them to pass exams to enable them to be an economically productive unit in society. All those claims of building better humans, of being the best you can be, of following your passion, of learning to be inclusive and that everyone has something to offer, are all lies. It is simply about being a banker, IT or human resource person, sales manager, accountant, or a supportive spouse.

POEM – MY AMAZING TRAVELS [My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures] My very first trip I still cannot believe Was planned and executed with such great ease. My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man, He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan. I got my first long vacation while working as a banker One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner. She visited my father and discussed the matter Arrangements were made without any flutter. We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany, In each of those places, there was somebody, To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places, It was a dream come true at our young ages. We even visited Holland, which was across the Border. To drive across from Germany was quite in order. Memories of great times continue to linger, I thank God for an understanding father. That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more, I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe. Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo, Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando. I was accompanied by my husband on many trips. Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit. Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah, Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla. We sailed aboard the Creole Queen On the Mississippi in New Orleans We traversed the Rockies in Colorado And walked the streets in Cozumel, Mexico. We were thrilled to visit the Vatican in Rome, The Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum. To explore the countryside in Florence, And to sail on a Gondola in Venice. My fridge is decorated with magnets Souvenirs of all my visits London, Madrid, Bahamas, Coco Cay, Barcelona. And the Leaning Tower of Pisa How can I forget the Spanish Steps in Rome? Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare was born. CN Tower in Toronto so very high I thought the elevator would take me to the sky. Then there was El Poble and Toledo Noted for Spanish Gold We travelled on the Euro star. The scenery was beautiful to behold! I must not omit Cartagena in Columbia, Anaheim, Las Vegas, and Catalina, Key West, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Pembroke Pines, Places I love to lime. Of course, I would like to make special mention, Of two exciting cruises with Royal Caribbean. Majesty of the Seas and Liberty of the Seas Two ships which grace the Seas. Last but not least and best of all We visited Paris in the fall. Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Berlin Amazing places, which made my head, spin. Copyright@BrendaMohammed

When Joe and I went to meet Goldman’s real estate team, though, we found they had a different view of the risks of this deal. Goldman wanted to bid as low as possible to avoid overpaying. For me, the biggest risk was not offering enough and missing out on a tremendous opportunity. I wanted to make sure we beat Bankers Trust’s expected bid. You often find this difference between different types of investors. Some will tell you that all the value is in driving down the price you pay as low as possible. These investors revel in the transaction itself, in playing with the deal terms, in beating up their opponent at the negotiating table. That has always seemed short term to me. What that thinking ignores is all the value you can realize once you own an asset: the improvements you can make, the refinancing you can do to improve your returns, the timing of your sale to make the most of a rising market. If you waste all your energy and goodwill in pursuit of the lowest possible purchase price and end up losing the asset to a higher bidder, all that future value goes away. Sometimes it’s best to pay what you have to pay and focus on what you can then do as an owner. The returns to successful ownership will often be much higher than the returns on winning a one-off battle over price.

What’s an IPO, exactly? A company decides it wants to “float” part of its equity on the public markets, allowing employees and founders to sell private shares to pay them off for years of service, as well as sell shares out of the corporate treasury to have some money in the bank. Large investment banks (such as my former employer Goldman Sachs) form what’s called a “syndicate” (“mafia” might be a better term) wherein they offer to effectively buy those shares from Facebook, and then sell them into the capital markets, usually by pushing it via their sales force onto wealthy clients or institutional investors. That syndicate either guarantees a price (“firm commitment”) or promises to get the best price it can (“best effort”). In the former case, the bank is taking real execution risk, and stands to lose money if it doesn’t engineer a “pop” in the stock on opening day. To mitigate the risk, the bank convinces the offering company to expect a lower price, while simultaneously jacking up what real price the market will bear with a zealous sales pitch to the market’s deepest pockets. Thus, it is absolutely jejune to think that a stock’s rise on opening day is due to clamoring and unexpected interest. Similar to Captain Renault in Casablanca, Wall Street bankers are shocked—shocked!—that there should be such a large and positive price dislocation in the market they just rigged.

Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, often regarded as the most famous decorated US army officer of the early twentieth century, wrote a book after World War I aptly called War Is a Racket. Upon retirement in the 1930s, he gave speeches around the country to spread his message—a message that sheds light upon the hidden internal dialogue underlying US military history. In 1935, Butler boldly stated: I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

A writer spinning out the manuscript of a book is like a banker generating debts he knows can never be repaid. From one perspective it’s a waste of time, ‘the deliberate pouring of water through a sieve’, in Dostoyevsky’s phrase. The effort will not be repaid. From another, however, it’s an incredibly important process in which cultural charisma – intellectual glamour – is generated via a mechanism of guilt. A bookshelf is a glamorous row of reproaches. We know that there are books we ought to read, and ought to have read, because they are said to be wonderful and capable of making us better people. They sit there on the shelf, seeming to watch us, waiting for our best moment of spiritual preparedness. Yet we fail to read them. As a result we feel guilty. The books seem to say to us: – You are trivial and lazy. Your life could be so much richer and more creative, yet you fritter away your attention on television and Facebook, or idle gossip, or sports, or Olafur Eliasson installations. This guilt is much more wonderful than the contents of the books themselves could ever be, and spiritually much more uplifting. The unreadness of books outstrips their readness in beauty and in utility. It’s tremendously important to believe that there are heights which we’ve failed to attain, mountains we can glimpse in the distance but not climb. It’s almost like believing in heaven. To quote Kafka once more: Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.

The Rockefeller Foundation was established in 1913 to maintain the control of the family’s oil empire. Today this foundation is the most important shareholder of Exxon with 4.3 million shares. Additionally, the foundation has two million shares in Standard Oil of California and 300.000 shares in Mobil Oil. Other smaller foundations belonging to the Rockefellers have three million shares in Exxon, and 400.000 shares in Standard Oil of Ohio. The total asset of this group of Rockefeller companies, amount to more than fifty billion dollars.[20] For a researcher who concentrates on the Rockefeller family, it won’t be difficult to prove that this immensely rich family has played an important role in the American politics of the twentieth century. The drift and decisions of American politics lead directly back to the Rockefeller family. The Rockefellers immigrated to America from Spain. The best-known member of this family was the influential industrialist, banker John Davidson Rockefeller. He asserted himself as the richest man of his time. Before going into oil transport, he was a wholesaler of narcotic drugs.[21] With an unbridled energy, he set up the Standard Oil Trust, which now possesses ninety percent of the oil refineries in the United States.[22] John Davidson Rockefeller also bought the Pocantico Hills territory in New York, which is the domicile of over a 100 families with the name Rockefeller. David Rockefeller, an absolute genius in the field of finances, has been managing Chase Manhattan Bank, the most important bank in the world, since 1945. The power of this bank is great enough to bring about or destroy governments, to start or end wars, and ruin companies or let them flourish worldwide, ultimately exerting great influence on the entire human race.

On August 21, 1931, invited to address an American Legion convention in Connecticut, he made the first no-holds-barred antiwar speech of his career. It stunned all who heard it or read it in the few papers that dared report it in part: I spent 33 years . . . being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. . . . I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. . . . In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. . . . I had . . . a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions. . . . I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three cities. The Marines operated on three continents. . . . We don’t want any more wars, but a man is a damn fool to think there won’t be any more of them. I am a peace-loving Quaker, but when war breaks out every damn man in my family goes. If we’re ready, nobody will tackle us. Give us a club and we will face them all. . . . There is no use talking about abolishing war; that’s damn foolishness. Take the guns away from men and they will fight just the same. . . . In the Spanish-American War we didn’t have any bullets to shoot, and if we had not had a war with a nation that was already licked and looking for an excuse to quit, we would have had hell licked out of us. . . . No pacifists or Communists are going to govern this country. If they try it there will be seven million men like you rise up and strangle them. Pacifists? Hell, I’m a pacifist, but I always have a club behind my back!

Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others. The result is the encroachment of one group upon the territory of another, the rivalry of groups for the resources of the soil, and then war. Trade and finance develop, and bring new class-divisions. "Any ordinary city is in fact two cities, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich, each at war with the other; and in either division there are smaller ones - you would make a great mistake if you treated them as single states". A mercantile bourgeoisie arises, whose members seek social position through wealth and conspicuous consumption: "they will spend large sums of money on their wives". These changes in the distribution of wealth produce political changes: as the wealth of the merchant over-reaches that of the land-owner, aristocracy gives way to a plutocratic oligarchy - wealthy traders and bankers rule the state. Then statesmanship, which is the coordination of social forces and the adjustment of policy to growth, is replaced by politics, which is the strategy of parts and the lust of the spoils of office. Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle. Aristocracy ruins itself by limiting too narrowly the circle within which power is confined; oligarchy ruins itself by the incautious scramble for immediate wealth. In rather case the end is revolution. When revolution comes it may seem to arise from little causes and petty whims, but though it may spring from slight occasions it is the precipitate result of grave and accumulated wrongs; when a body is weakened by neglected ills, the merest exposure may bring serious disease. Then democracy comes: the poor overcome their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing the rest; and give to the people an equal share of freedom and power. But even democracy ruins itself by excess – of democracy. Its basic principle is the equal right of all to hold office and determine public policy. This is at first glance a delightful arrangement; it becomes disastrous because the people are not properly equipped by education to select the best rulers and the wisest courses. As to the people they have no understanding, and only repeat what their rulers are pleased to tell them; to get a doctrine accepted or rejected it is only necessary to have it praised or ridiculed in a popular play (a hit, no doubt, at Aristophanes, whose comedies attacked almost every new idea). Mob-rule is a rough sea for the ship of state to ride; every wind of oratory stirs up the waters and deflects the course. The upshot of such a democracy is tyranny or autocracy; the crowd so loves flattery, it is so “hungry for honey” that at last the wiliest and most unscrupulous flatterer, calling himself the “protected of the people” rises to supreme power. (Consider the history of Rome). The more Plato thinks of it, the more astounded he is at the folly of leaving to mob caprice and gullibility the selection of political officials – not to speak of leaving it to those shady and wealth-serving strategists who pull the oligarchic wires behind the democratic stage. Plato complains that whereas in simpler matters – like shoe-making – we think only a specially-trained person will server our purpose, in politics we presume that every one who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state.

Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.

The Warburg family is the most important ally of the Rothschilds, and the history of this family is at least equally interesting. The book The Warburgs shows that the bloodline of this family dates back to the year 1001.[28] Whilst fleeing from the Muslims, they established themselves in Spain. There they were pursued by Fernando of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and moved to Lombardy. According to the annals of the city of Warburg, in 1559, Simon von Cassel was entitled to establish himself in this city in Westphalia, and he changed his surname to Warburg. The city register proves that he was a banker and a trader. The real banking tradition was beginning to take shape when three generations later Jacob Samuel Warburg immigrated to Altona in 1668. His grandson Markus Gumprich Warburg moved to Hamburg in 1774, where his two sons founded the well-known bank Warburg & Co. in 1798. With the passage of time, this bank did business throughout the entire world. By 1814, Warburg & Co had business relations with the Rothschilds in London. According to Joseph Wechsberg in his book The Merchant Bankers, the Warburgs regarded themselves equal to the Rothschild, Oppenheimer and Mendelsohn families.[29] These families regularly met in Paris, London and Berlin. It was an unwritten rule that these families let their descendants marry amongst themselves. The Warburgs married, just like the Rothschilds, within houses (bloodlines). That’s how this family got themselves involved with the prosperous banking family Gunzberg from St. Petersburg, with the Rosenbergs from Kiev, with the Oppenheims and Goldschmidts from Germany, with the Oppenheimers from South Africa and with the Schiffs from the United States.[30] The best-known Warburgs were Max Warburg (1867-1946), Paul Warburg (1868-1932) and Felix Warburg (1871-1937). Max Warburg served his apprenticeship with the Rothschilds in London, where he asserted himself as an expert in the field of international finances. Furthermore, he occupied himself intensively with politics and, since 1903, regularly met with the German minister of finance. Max Warburg advised, at the request of monarch Bernhard von Bülow, the German emperor on financial affairs. Additionally, he was head of the secret service. Five days after the armistice of November 11, 1918 he was delegated by the German government as a peace negotiator at a peace committee in Versailles. Max Warburg was also one of the directors of the Deutsche Reichsbank and had financial importances in the war between Japan and Russia and in the Moroccan crisis of 1911. Felix Warburg was familiarized with the diamond trade by his uncle, the well-known banker Oppenheim. He married Frieda Schiff and settled in New York. By marrying Schiff’s daughter he became partner at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Paul Warburg became acquainted with the youngest daughter of banker Salomon Loeb, Nina. It didn’t take long before they married. Paul Warburg left Germany and also became a partner with Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. During the First World War he was a member of the Federal Reserve Board, and in that position he had a controlling influence on the development of American financial policies. As a financial expert, he was often consulted by the government. The Warburgs invested millions of dollars in various projects which all served one purpose: one absolute world government. That’s how the war of Japan against Russia (1904-1905) was financed by the Warburgs bank Kuhn, Loeb & Co.[31] The purpose of this war was destroying the csardom. As said before, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, James P. Warburg said: “We shall have a world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government

Geithner’s proposed terms for the loan—which drew heavily on the work of bankers he had asked to explore options for private financing for AIG—included a floating interest rate starting at about 11.5 percent. AIG would also be required to give the government an ownership share of almost 80 percent of the company. Tough terms were appropriate. Given our relative unfamiliarity with the company, the difficulty of valuing AIG FP’s complex derivatives positions, and the extreme conditions we were seeing in financial markets, lending such a large amount inevitably entailed significant risk. Evidently, it was risk that no private-sector firm had been willing to undertake. Taxpayers deserved adequate compensation for bearing that risk. In particular, the requirement that AIG cede a substantial part of its ownership was intended to ensure that taxpayers shared in the gains if the company recovered. Equally important, tough terms helped address the unfairness inherent in aiding AIG and not other firms, while also serving to mitigate the moral hazard arising from the bailout. If executives at similarly situated firms believed they would get easy terms in a government bailout, they would have little incentive to raise capital, reduce risk, or accept market offers for their assets or their company. The Fed and Treasury had pushed for tough terms for the shareholders of Bear Stearns and Fannie and Freddie for precisely these reasons. The political backlash would be intense no matter what we did, but we needed to show that we got taxpayers the best possible deal and had minimized the windfall that the bailout gave to AIG and its shareholders.

ECB – unlike, say, the US Federal Reserve which is placed within a political structure where Congress, the President, and the Treasury supply all the necessary political counterweights – is free (indeed, is supposed) to operate in a political vacuum: the parliaments and governments of the members of the euro zone have lost control over monetary policy, while the EP has no authority in this area. Moreover, the ECB enjoys not only ‘instrument independence’ but also ‘goal independence’. When a central bank enjoys only instrument independence, it is up to the government to fix the target – say, the politically acceptable level of inflation – leaving then the central bank free to decide how best to achieve the target. In the case of goal independence, the discretionary power of the central banker is much larger. The idea that central bankers, or other economic experts, may know what rate of inflation is in the long-run interest of a country (and, a fortiori, of a group of countries at very different levels of socioeconomic developments such as the EU) is indeed extraordinary. Politicians and elected policymakers, rather than experts, can be expected to be sensitive to the public’s preferred balance of inflation and unemployment. If the public wants to trade some unemployment for a somewhat higher rate of inflation, it can make this preference known by electing candidates who stand for such a policy; but no such possibility is given to the citizens of the euro zone or to their political representatives.

it was obviously the best thing to do if both Britain and France were against it. After

Indeed, just that year we had actually rejected a $200-million low-interest loan from the World Bank. I also told Conable, who was bragging about employing the best minds in the world, that hiring smart economists does not necessarily translate into policies and programs that benefit the poor. I

The Chair of a banker has two posts, for the best Lady.

The more time I’ve spent thinking and reading about it, the more I’ve come to discover that lots of people dream of a purpose in life that doesn’t fit into a certain box. And I think we need to start talking about that. A passion or a purpose can be so much more abstract and different than we think. Feeling a call to some purpose doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be a preacher. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer or a banker.

The Gold Standard is the best ‘Governor’ 340 that can be devised for a world that is still human rather than divine.

Inspired by their interpretation of biblical prophecies in the Book of Revelation, conservative Protestants had long feared a “one-world” government that would be ruled over by the Antichrist. In the early twentieth century these fears had attached to the League of Nations, and during the Cold War these fears were often channeled into a virulent anticommunism—though Hal Lindsey’s best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) had warned of a European Community that would usher in the reign of the devil. With the fall of the Soviet Union, suspicions fell squarely on the UN. And, in the case of Robertson, on the Illuminati, on wealthy Jewish bankers, and on conspiratorial corporate internationalists. The Wall Street Journal dismissed Robertson’s book as “a predictable compendium of the lunatic fringe’s greatest hits,” written in an “energetically crackpot style.

Since Americans embraced manifest destiny, it has fought wars both great and small. In each one the nation’s leaders have invoked God’s blessing. Sometimes the United States stood for righteous causes, especially in World War II. However, many were no less than the criminal exploitation of weak nations. Marine general Smedley Butler, a veteran of many small wars, spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. . . . In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

I went to see the house. (...) The place was a squat—thirty-five heroin addicts were living there. The chaos was palpable. It smelled like dog shit, cat shit, piss. (...) One floor was literally burned—it was nothing but charred floorboards with a toilet sitting in the middle. This place looked terrible. “How much?” I asked. Forty thousand guilder, they told me. They clearly just wanted to dump this house. But if you bought it, you were also getting the heroin addicts who were squatting in it, and under Dutch law, it was all but impossible to get them out. For any normal human being to buy this place would be like throwing money out the window. So I said, “Okay, I’m interested.” I talked about it with my friends. “You’re nuts,” they said. “It’s not money you have—what the hell are you going to do?” ...A drug dealer [had] bought the place. But he didn’t pay the mortgage. And he didn’t pay and he didn’t pay, and finally he was in such financial trouble that he decided to burn the place down for the insurance. Except that the fire was stopped in time and only the one floor was damaged. And then the insurance investigator found that the drug dealer had done it intentionally, and the bank took the house away from him. And this was how it turned into a squat for heroin addicts. “But where is this guy?” I asked. “He’s still living in the house,” the neighbor told me. This house had two entrances. One went to the first floor and the other to the second. The door with the board across it was the entrance to the first floor, where I’d already been; the drug dealer was living on the second floor. So I went around and knocked on the door, and he answered. “I want to talk to you,” I said. He let me in. There was a table in the middle of the floor, covered with ecstasy, cocaine, hashish, all ready to go into bags. There was a pistol on the table. This guy was bloated—he looked like hell. And suddenly I poured my heart out to him. I told him everything... I said that this house was what I wanted—all I wanted—the only home I could afford with the little money I had. I was weeping. This guy was standing there with his mouth open. He stood there looking at me. Then he said, “Okay. But I have a condition.” “This is my deal. I’ll get everybody out; you’ll get your mortgage. But the moment you sign the contract and get the house, you’re going to sign a contract that I can stay on this floor for the rest of my life. That’s the deal. If you cross me...” He showed me the pistol. It was in a good neighborhood, where a comparable place would sell for forty to fifty times the price. And [now] it was empty—not a heroin addict in sight. I got a mortgage in less than a week. But now, since my bank knew the house was empty, Dutch law gave them the right to buy the house for themselves. So I went back to the drug dealer and said, “Can we get some addicts back into the place? Because it’s too good now.” “How many you want?” he asked. “About twelve,” I said. “No problem,” he said. He got twelve addicts back. I took curtains I found in a dumpster and put them on the windows. Then I scattered some more debris around the place. Now all I had to do was wait. My contract signing was two weeks away—it was the longest two weeks in my life. Finally the day came... and I walked into the bank. The atmosphere was very serious. One of the bankers looked at me and said, “I heard that the unwanted tenants have left the house.” I just looked at him very coolly and said, “Yeah, some left.” He cleared his throat and said, “Sign here.” I signed. “Congratulations,” the banker said. “You’re the owner of the house.” I looked at him and said, “You know what? Actually everybody left the house.” He looked back at me and said, “My dear girl, if this is true, you have just made the best real-estate deal I’ve heard of in my twenty-five-year career.

Governments then believed matters of finance were best left to bankers; and so the task of restoring the world’s finances fell into the hands of the central banks of the four major surviving powers: Britain, France, Germany, and the United States.

He would soon discover that Strong’s death had not only robbed him of his best friend, but also of much of his power.

insisting that going off gold was the best way to lift prices

Moreau was forced out by the Vichy regime for being too sympathetic to Britain—the ultimate irony for a man who at the peak of his career had done his best to undermine British dominance in finance.

Uncle Daniel may have died a very wealthy man, one of the wealthiest of his generation, but what I liked best was the description I read several days after his death: “His busy life as a banker and man of affairs

Even T. S. Eliot, one of the best-known and successful poets of the twentieth century, was a banker. Poetry simply did not pay the bills.

Baker didn’t need much convincing. He was a cattleman and banker from central Arkansas who favored wearing a cowboy hat even in Washington, D.C. He was familiar with the poultry industry and big meatpacking companies, and he tended to think they operated best when left alone. Government rules just impeded the natural functioning of the market. Tabor’s efforts in Iowa, and the parallel efforts in Washington, D.C., and other states, were a bridge too far for Baker. “Don’t get away from the free enterprise system,” Baker said later about Tabor’s speech. “You start infringing on it with regulations like that.

The best bet when dealing with kings was to make a reasonable effort to play the game, but one that is still bound to fail. The fourteenth-century Arab traveler Ibn Battuta tells of the customs of the King of Sind, a terrifying monarch who took a particular delight in displays of arbitrary power.33 It was customary for foreign worthies visiting the king to present him with magnificent presents; whatever the gift was, he would invariably respond by presenting the bearer with something many times its value. As a result, a substantial business developed where local bankers would lend money to such visitors to finance particularly spectacular gifts, knowing they could be well repaid from the proceeds of royal one-upmanship. The king must have known about this. He didn’t object—since the whole point was to show that his wealth exceeded all possible equivalence—anyway he knew if he really needed to, he could always expropriate the bankers. Kings knew that the really important game was not economic, but one of status, and theirs was absolute.

I knew that my parents wanted me out from under their feet as soon as possible, so that I was no longer a burden to them, but I had to pretend, even if just for a few hours, that they really did have my best interests at heart. So I wandered the rooms smiling, thanking the guests for attending, greeting my father’s colleagues and their bumbling sons who were destined to one day be bankers themselves. I pretended to enjoy conversation with the daughters, who were busy making eyes at the bumbling boys, and tried to laugh at the terrible jokes, all the while forcing myself not to flinch at the touch of strangers.

Now they were lawyers and investment bankers, with faces creased and drawn by the skirmish of daily life. Others I’d known well, and as we inched perilously closer to the casket, our talk evidenced a shared fondness for Rob but also something else shared in our own receding dreams. There was Ty and his dermatology career, me and my struggles to publish a second novel, former history majors who were doing their best to remain in school forever. Nobody, it seemed, was making the money he’d thought he would make, inhabiting the home he’d thought he would inhabit, doing the thing he’d thought he would do in life. Nobody was fulfilling the dreams harbored on graduation day almost ten years earlier.

As you gain experience in business, as you see and solve more and more problems, you will get a fair idea of what works in your industry and what doesn’t. Although your gut will often be right, take a hint from former President Reagan: “Trust and verify.” As a McKinsey alumnus who now works as a merchant banker put it: A sharp manager with a lot of business experience can often reach the same conclusions as McKinsey—and in a much shorter time—by gut instinct, but most executives aren’t that good. Because McKinsey focuses so intently on a problem, it often produces a more robust solution than even the best executive can. Most executives will miss a few things because they don’t take the time—they usually don’t have the time. So, even though your initial instinct may be—and probably is—right, take enough time to verify your gut with facts.

Yevgeny Dvoskin – Brighton Beach mobster who became one of Russia’s most notorious ‘shadow bankers’ after moving back to Moscow with his uncle, Ivankov, joining forces with the Russian security services to funnel tens of billions of dollars in ‘black cash’ into the West. Felix Sater – Dvoskin’s best friend since childhood. Became a key business partner of the Trump Organization, developing a string of properties for Trump, all the while retaining high-level contacts in Russian intelligence.

Is he the fun-phobic banker I thought I knew? Who is this guy who invents words to describe my hair, and has deep thoughts about my abs?

A veteran of Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds who has grown cynical over the years explains how it works for Gulf investors. All the best deals and opportunities are seized upon by big American institutions with the help of New York City banks. The second-tier deals go to the Europeans. And the lemons are packaged up and rebranded for what derisive bankers call the “dumb money” in the Middle East. “They don’t care about us,” he says. “They only want our money.

In Robert Noyce’s office there hung a black-and-white photo that showed a jovial crew of young scientists offering a champagne toast to the smiling William Shockley. The picture was taken on November 1, 1956, a few hours after the news of Shockley’s Nobel Prize had reached Palo Alto. By the time that happy picture was taken, however, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories was a chaotic and thoroughly unhappy place. For all his technical expertise, Shockley had proven to be an inexpert manager. He was continually shifting his researchers from one job to another; he couldn’t seem to make up his mind what, if anything, the company was trying to produce. “There was a group that worked for Shockley that was pretty unhappy,” Noyce recalled many years later. “And that group went to Beckman and said, hey, this isn’t working. . . . About that time, Shockley got his Nobel Prize. And Beckman was sort of between the devil and the deep blue sea. He couldn’t fire Shockley, who had just gotten this great international honor, but he had to change the management or else everyone else would leave.” In the end, Beckman stuck with Shockley—and paid a huge price. Confused and frustrated, eight of the young scientists, including Noyce, Moore, and Hoerni, decided to look for another place to work. That first group—Shockley called them “the traitorous eight”—turned out to be pioneers, for they established a pattern that has been followed time and again in Silicon Valley ever since. They decided to offer themselves as a team to whichever employer made the best offer. Word of this unusual proposal reached an investment banker in New York, who offered a counterproposal: Instead of working for somebody else, the eight scientists should start their own firm. The banker knew of an investor who would provide the backing—the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation, which had been looking hard for an entrée to the transistor business. A deal was struck. Each of the eight young scientists put up $500 in earnest money, the corporate angel put up all the rest, and early in 1957 the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation opened for business, a mile or so down the road from Shockley’s operation.

At the beginning of the 1910s, the American banker J. P. Morgan estimated that the capitalist system could not function if the difference between the salaries of the directors and the workers went beyond a factor of 30 or 40. It is presently above 1,000! The 20 percent best-off Americans contribute half of consumer spending. The remaining 80 percent are quickly becoming impoverished, falling into spiraling debt that has entirely removed them from the cycle of investment and savings

The kings, who are the most set on destroying the feudal baronies, are also the best friends of the merchants, the bankers and the master manufacturers. A shipowner is not the chieftain of a gang of sailors whom he abstracts from Power's clutch, but rather an employer of labour who on the contrary, makes them available to power when the time comes for it to require them; In this way, it is explained the favour shown by Francis I, to take one instance towards, Ango. A banker is not after political power - he is after wealth. His function is to build a sort of store-house on which, when the when the time is ripe, Power will draw to transmute this wealth into strength. A mercantile aristocracy, then, so far from abstracting anything from the state's resources, makes potential additions to them which will, when circumstances so require, be realized. This is the only aspect under which, for many years, Power saw the money power. But in the end the overthrow of every other social domination of whatever kind left financial domination master of the field. At that stage it was seemed to be the formative source of fresh cells. That showed itself clearly enough in the case of the industrial employers. Not only was the employer the law in his factory, but quite often he would put up nearby a township for his workers in which he had the position of prince. A point was reached at some of the states of the USA, at which the manufacturer, owning as he did the land on which the factory had been built, allowed on it no other police than his own. In its jealousy of any and every command, however small, which was not its own, Power could not tolerate such independence. Moreover, as in every other battle which it had fought with aristocratic formations, it soon found itself appealed to by the underlings. Then it made its way not only into the employer's township but into his workshop as well; there it introduced its own law, its own police and its own factory regulations. If its earlier aggressions against closed aristocratic formations were not our old friends, we might be tempted to see in this one nothing more than a result of the popular character of the modern state, and of socialist ideas. These factors played, no doubt, their part, but no more was needed, than that Power should be itself - a thing naturally tending to shut out the intervention of all other authorities. The financial cell is less visible to the eye than the industrial cell. But its hold on money, and above all by its disposal of vast amounts of private savings, finance has been able to build up a vast structure and impose on the ever growing number of its subjects and authority which is ever plainer on the planer to the view on the empires of finance, also, power made war. The signal for battle was not given by a socialist state, the natural enemy of the barons of capital. It came from Theodore Roosevelt, himself a man of Power, and therefore the enemy of all private authorities. In this way, a new alliance was sealed - an alliance no less natural than that of the Power of early days with the prisoners of the clan-cells, than that of the monarchy with the subjects of the feudal barons - that of the modern state with the men exploited by capitalist industry, with the men dominated by the financial trusts. The state has often waged this particular war half-heartedly, thereby making the extent to which it has turned its back on itself and has renounced its role of Power. And renunciation was in this case favoured by the internal weakness of modern Power; the precariousness of its tenure encouraged its phantom tenants to betray it in favor of the financial aristocracies. But Power has natural charms for those who desire it for its use. It was a certain that anti-capitalists would come to occupy the public offices of the bourgeois state, as it was certain that anti-feudalists would come to occupy those of the monarchial state.

Eighty years ago, Martin Heidegger extolled Nazi Germany as providing the best hope for rescuing the glorious civilization of the Greeks from the barbarians of the East and West. Today, German bankers are crushing Greece under an economic regime designed to maintain their wealth and power.

Particularly galling was the way the Homestead Act was abused. Passed during the Civil War, it was supposed to make a reality out of Lincoln’s version of the free labor, free soil dream. But fewer than half a million people actually set up viable farms over nearly half a century. Most public lands were taken over by the railroads, thanks to the government’s beneficent land-grant policy (another form of primitive accumulation); by land speculators backed by eastern bankers, who sometimes hired pretend “homesteaders” in acts of outright fraud; or by giant cattle ranches and timber companies and the like who worked hand in glove with government land agents. As early as 1862 two-thirds of Iowa (or ten million acres) was owned by speculators. Railroads closed off one-third of Kansas to homesteading and that was the best land available. Mushrooming cities back east became, in a kind of historical inversion, the safety valve for overpopulated areas in the west. At least the city held out the prospect of remunerative wage labor if no longer a life of propertied independence. Few city workers had the capital to migrate west anyway; when one Pennsylvania legislator suggested that the state subsidize such moves, he was denounced as “the Pennsylvania Communist” for his trouble. During the last land boom of the nineteenth century (from about 1883 to 1887), 16 million acres underwent that conversion every year. Railroads doubled down by selling off or mortgaging portions of the public domain they had just been gifted to finance construction or to speculate with. But land-grant roads were built at costs 100 percent greater than warranted and badly built at that, needing to be rebuilt just fifteen years later.

In truth the macroeconomic models placed too little attention on inequality and the consequences of policies for distribution. Policies have been based on these flawed models both helped create the crisis and have proven ineffective in dealing with it. They may even be contributing to ensuring that when the recovery occurs, it will be jobless. Most importantly, for the purposes of this book, macroeconomic policies have contributed to the high level of inequality in America and elsewhere. While the advocates of these policies may claim that they are the best policies for all, this is not the case. There is no single, best policy. As I have stressed in this book, policies have distributive effects, so there are trade-offs between the interests of bondholders and debtors, young and old, financial sectors and other sectors, and so on. I have also stressed, however, that there are alternative policies that would have led to better overall economic performance—especially so if we judge economic performance by what is happening to the well-being of most citizens. But if these alternatives are to be implemented, the institutional arrangements through which the decisions are made will have to change. We cannot have a monetary system that is run by people whose thinking is captured by the bankers and that is effectively run for the benefit of the those at the top.

Bankers, not just rouge bankers but all bankers, even the best, the most honourable and the most honest, do things which would land the rest of us in jail. Near my house in France is a large grain silo. After the harvest, farmers deposit grain in it. The silo gives them a certificate for every tonne of grain that they deposit. They can withdraw that amount of grain whenever they want by presenting that certificate. If the silo owner issued more certificates than the grain he kept in the silo, he would go to jail. But that is effectively what bankers do. They keep as reserves only a fraction of the money deposited with them, which is why we call the system the fractional reserve banking system.

most individual stocks had hit their highs in late 1928 or at best in early 1929.

My Lord, It was very kind of you to send the lovely gift which is very useful now that the weather has turned. I am pleased to relate that the cashmere absorbed an application of black dye quite evenly so that it is now appropriate for mourning. Thank you for your thoughtfulness. Lady Trenear “You dyed it?” Devon asked aloud, setting the note on his desk with mixture of amusement and irritation. Reaching for a silver penholder, he inserted a fresh nib and pulled a sheet of writing paper from a nearby stack. That morning he had already written a half-dozen missives to lawyers, his banker, and contractors, and had hired an outside agent to analyze the estate’s finances. He grimaced at the sight of his ink-stained fingers. The lemon-and-salt paste his valet had given him wouldn’t entirely remove the smudges. He was tired of writing, and even more so of numbers, and Kathleen’s letter was a welcome distraction. The challenge could not go unanswered. Staring down at the letter with a faint smile, Deon pondered the best way to annoy her. Dipping the pen nib into the inkwell, he wrote, Madam, I am delighted to learn that you find the shawl useful in these cooler days of autumn. On that subject, I am writing to inform you of my recent decision to donate all the black curtains that currently shroud the windows at Eversby Priory to a London charitable organization. Although you will regrettably no longer have use of the cloth, it will be made into winter coats for the poor, which I am sure you will agree is a far nobler purpose. I am confident in your ability to find other ways of making the atmosphere at Eversby Priory appropriately grim and cheerless. If I do not receive the curtains promptly, I will take it to mean that you are eager for my assistance, in which case I will be delighted to oblige you by coming to Hampshire at once. Trenear Kathleen’s reply was delivered a week later, along with massive crates containing the black curtains.

No profession, trade, or calling, is overcrowded in the upper story. Wherever you find the most honest and intelligent merchant or banker, or the best lawyer, the best doctor, the best clergyman, the best shoemaker, carpenter, or anything else, that man is most sought for, and has always enough to do.

Even the great democrat could only with difficulty and imperfectly hold in check the powers which he had unchained; thousands of swords still at his signal flew from the scabbard, but they were no longer equally ready upon that signal to return to the sheath. Fate is mightier than genius. Caesar desired to become the restorer of the civil commonwealth, and became the founder of the military monarchy which he abhorred; he overthrew the regime of aristocrats and bankers in the state, only to put a military regime in their place, and the commonwealth continued as before to be tyrannized and worked for profit by a privileged minority. And yet it is a privilege of the highest natures thus creatively to err. The brilliant attempts of great men to realize the ideal, though they do not reach their aim, form the best treasure of the nations. It was owing to the work of Caesar that the Roman military state did not become a police-state till after the lapse of several centuries, and that the Roman Imperators, however little they otherwise resembled the great founder of their sovereignty, yet employed the soldier in the main not against the citizen but against the public foe, and esteemed both nation and army too highly to set the latter as constable over the former.

Because private equity firms and hedge funds valued and treated Goldman differently than did traditional corporate clients, Goldman’s approach to clients began to change. The private equity firms valued any investment bank that could get them the inside track on deals and could provide the best financing terms (including guaranteed or bridge financing, which puts the investment bank at risk if it can’t sell or distribute the loan to other lenders or investors). Many of the private equity firms felt they already had people (many of them former bankers) who were smarter and more skilled than those in the banks in the kinds of deals the firms were doing. In an interview, one private equity client described most investment bankers who maintained a relationship with his firm as “order takers.