Good Morning Investors Quotes

My attorney general, Eric Holder, would later point out that as egregious as the behavior of the banks may have been leading up to the crisis, there were few indications that their executives had committed prosecutable offenses under existing statutes—and we were not in the business of charging people with crimes just to garner good headlines. But to a nervous and angry public, such answers—no matter how rational—weren’t very satisfying. Concerned that we were losing the political high ground, Axe and Gibbs urged us to sharpen our condemnations of Wall Street. Tim, on the other hand, warned that such populist gestures would be counterproductive, scaring off the investors we needed to recapitalize the banks. Trying to straddle the line between the public’s desire for Old Testament justice and the financial markets’ need for reassurance, we ended up satisfying no one. “It’s like we’ve got a hostage situation,” Gibbs said to me one morning. “We know the banks have explosives strapped to their chests, but to the public it just looks like we’re letting them get away with a robbery.

Blaming Satan can absolve oppressors quicker than God's grace. I really am not that bad - so the logic goes - it is Satan, since the Garden of Eden, who has been leading humanity astray. I am really a good person, but I do wrestle with my secret demons. When I participate in the pain of others (not just physical but also caused by society and economics) of others, it is the devil that made me do it. Thankfully, Jesus took our place on the cross so that we do not need to pay the price for our sins. The devil made me do it, and Jesus cleaned up my mess. As a new creature in Christ "I" can move on without really addressing the consequences of or restitution for those sins the devil made me do. Hence, Nazi concentration guards can torture all week long and still attended worship ship services on Sunday mornings. Politicians can lead armies to war under false pretenses without addressing the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, who are killed or maimed because, after all, our intentions were pure - it was the enemy who was really evil. Repentance from Wall Street greed that tanked the U.S. economy and swindled thousands out of their life savings in 2008 can occur without having to deal with issues of public accountability and restitution to individual investors.

Ivar controlled his holding company with a tight grip. Its board of directors was Ivar, Ivar’s father, Ivar’s partner Paul Toll, and two of Ivar’s closest colleagues. As one of those colleagues later explained, annual meetings were perfunctory. Ivar would walk in briskly and deliver a quick monologue: Good morning, gentlemen. Will the secretary please read the minutes? It has been decided to increase the capital of Kreuger & Toll by twelve million kronor by issuing new shares at a rate of two hundred and forty percent of par. Do I hear any objections? Thank you, gentlemen. Good morning.19 Kreuger & Toll’s annual financial statements contained no explanation as to how the company had made so much money. One of the largest profit entries was labeled simply “profits from other investments.” Ivar’s earlier investors, from outside America, hadn’t seemed to mind the vagueness.

Three American business school professors decided to find out. In a first-of-its-kind study, they analyzed more than 26,000 earnings calls from more than 2,100 public companies over six and a half years using linguistic algorithms similar to the ones employed in the Twitter study. They examined whether the time of day influenced the emotional tenor of these critical conversations—and, as a consequence, perhaps even the price of the company’s stock. Calls held first thing in the morning turned out to be reasonably upbeat and positive. But as the day progressed, the “tone grew more negative and less resolute.” Around lunchtime, mood rebounded slightly, probably because call participants recharged their mental and emotional batteries, the professors conjectured. But in the afternoon, negativity deepened again, with mood recovering only after the market’s closing bell. Moreover, this pattern held “even after controlling for factors such as industry norms, financial distress, growth opportunities, and the news that companies were reporting.”8 In other words, even when the researchers factored in economic news (a slowdown in China that hindered a company’s exports) or firm fundamentals (a company that reported abysmal quarterly earnings), afternoon calls “were more negative, irritable, and combative” than morning calls.9 Perhaps more important, especially for investors, the time of the call and the subsequent mood it engendered influenced companies’ stock prices. Shares declined in response to negative tone—again, even after adjusting for actual good news or bad news—“leading to temporary stock mispricing for firms hosting earnings calls later in the day.” While the share prices eventually righted themselves, these results are remarkable. As the researchers note, “call participants represent the near embodiment of the idealized homo economicus.” Both the analysts and the executives know the stakes. It’s not merely the people on the call who are listening. It’s the entire market. The wrong word, a clumsy answer, or an unconvincing response can send a stock’s price spiraling downward, imperiling the company’s prospects and the executives’ paychecks. These hardheaded businesspeople have every incentive to act rationally, and I’m sure they believe they do. But economic rationality is no match for a biological clock forged during a few million years of evolution. Even “sophisticated economic agents acting in real and highly incentivized settings are influenced by diurnal rhythms in the performance of their professional duties.