Andrew Ross Sorkin Quotes
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As a journalist, a big part of what you do is search for drama and conflict. And a lot of the backstory with 'Billions' is grounded in my journalistic background.
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Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a company is not allowed to provide a personal benefit to a decision maker in return for business. But hiring the sons and daughters of powerful executives and politicians is hardly just the province of banks doing business in China: it has been a time-tested practice here in the United States.
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I started, actually, in journalism when I was - well. I started at the 'New York Times' when I was 18 years old, actually, but really got into journalism when I was 15 years old and had started a sports magazine which was trying to become a national sports magazine.
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When you can't lend or trade - and you can't invest with the leverage that juiced returns to support seven- and eight-figure bonuses - how exactly are you going to make money?
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I got my start in the 'New York Times' because I used to read Stuart Elliot, the advertising columns. I still do. And I read him so religiously, I wanted to work for him before I died.
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As a child, I always enjoyed - my parents used to have these little cocktail parties - and I always loved trying to get the adults to tell me things they weren't supposed to say. And in many ways, that's what my job is today; it's getting people to tell me things that they probably are otherwise not supposed to say.
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In the age of activism that is clearly not going away, it would seem that some form of engagement from directors with shareholders - rather than directors simply taking their cues from management - would go a long way toward helping boards work on behalf of all shareholders rather just the most vocal.
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I would say that my whole career is effectively trying to be a storyteller within the context of financial news.
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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.
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What if the slowdown in merger activity isn't cyclical, but secular? What if corporations have learned the lessons of so many companies before them that the odds of a successful merger are no better than 50-50 and probably less? Is it possible that the biggest deals have already been done?
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If I have a spare second, I usually catch up on the many magazines I'm behind on or watch the latest movies on demand that I usually missed at the theater. I love magazines. My top three: Graydon Carter's 'Vanity Fair', Adam Moss' 'New York magazine' and David Remnick's 'New Yorker.'
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My training really was at the 'New York Times,' you know. When I got there, I was literally supposed to stay there for five weeks, and I got lucky like nobody, you know, like nobody's business.
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Let's start with a basic question: Do we, as a country, want our most highly qualified employees from the private sector to pursue public service? The answer, I would imagine, should be yes.
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Bitcoin, in the short or even long term, may turn out be a good investment in the same way that anything that is rare can be considered valuable. Like baseball cards. Or a Picasso.
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No one suggested Lehman deserved to be saved. But the argument has been made that the crisis might have been less severe if it had been saved, because Lehman's failure created remarkable uncertainty in the market as investors became confused about the role of the government and whether it was picking winners and losers.
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Why do we have financial crises? Why do banks lose money? If history is any guide, it hasn't often been the result of speculative bets. It has been the result of banks making loans to individuals and businesses who can't pay them back.
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Since JPMorgan Chase announced its surprise $2 billion-and-growing trading loss, there have been renewed calls from economists, pundits, and politicians to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that prevented commercial banks from participating in investment banking activities.
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Debt, we've learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage.
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Some billionaires like cars, yachts and private jets. Others like newspapers.
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Bringing back something akin to Glass-Steagall would clearly help limit risk in the system. And that's a very good and worthy goal. Letting banks sell securities and insurance products and services allowed them to grow too big too fast and fueled a culture that put profit and pay over prudence.
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I have always looked at the world through the prism of money to some degree. If you could follow the money, it explains a lot of things, in all sorts of aspects of the world. You can look at politics through the prism of money. You can look at art through the prism of money. You can look at sports through the prism of money.
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Wall Street is littered with clever plans to use financial instruments to change behavior - carbon trading, for example. Some have changed the world, and others failed miserably.
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What if lawmakers never spoke to their constituents? Oddly enough, that's exactly how corporate America operates. Shareholders vote for directors, but the directors rarely, if ever, communicate with them.
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I think, with Hank Paulson, the concept of a bailout was anathema to him from day one. He was a Republican; he's a free marketeer. He believes in capitalism, and part of capitalism is believing in failure. And so the idea of bailing out an institution, I think, went against every part of him.