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.
Obviously you have to make a profit to put out a newspaper. I'm not an idiot. But when the margins are in excess of 25 per cent you're talking about greed.
Deregulation created this epidemic of greed which according to the rules of capitalism was OK. Beyond that there was criminal behaviour. There have been no repercussions and it's hard to make your peace with.
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.
Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with 'what can I give' spirit.
During periods of extreme fear or greed, you don't have the proper balance between those two to generate market efficiency and you get extremes in behavior.
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.
Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.
