Category Archives: Classic Quotes

Greg Akcelrod, the French soccer player who, through an exaggerated rèsumè quite nearly climbed to the top of Euro soccer.  Mr. Akcelrod has apologized “if I lied a little bit on my CV,” but rationalizes that he never took a single … Continue reading →

Bill  Thomas, vice chair of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, to Robert J. Levin, former chief business officer of Fannie Mae, who said the decision to stop investing in low-income housing was above his pay grade.

Phil Angelides, chairman of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, to Robert Rubin, former Chairman of the Board of Citigroup and former U.S. Treasury Secretary.  Indeed, Mr. Angelides, there should no such thing as a garden-variety board member.  That there were such … Continue reading →

MD Sass has a formula for investment that sprang from the ashes of the great salad oil scandal of 1963.  Mixed metaphors aside, Martin Sass was fooled by a New Jersey company that was storing vats full of water, not the soybean oil in … Continue reading →

Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard.  Mr. Hurd references sales ability.  The Barometer would prefer to think of “good” as goodness.  The Barometer hopes the sales folks are capable, competent, and good.  The first two do not always walk on the same side of the … Continue reading →

Robert Moffat, former senior VP at IBM.  The 11th individual of the 21 indicted to enter a guilty plea in the spider-web-like case of alleged insider trading by Galleon Group.  Mr. Moffat acknowledged that he passed along information on how sales … Continue reading →

Google co-founder Sergey Brin on why Google reversed its position on doing business in China. Previously the company was doing business there in order to “advance the bar.”  Well done, sir, but “discomfort” is a detached and sterile term to describe one’s reaction to … Continue reading →

A former lawmaker in Kentucky who is in prison for murder asked to be moved from protective custody so that he could join the ranks of the prison proletarian masses for gridiron bonding.  Neither rain nor snow, nor sleet, nor murder … Continue reading →

Harry Markopolos, on investment fund advisers and their take on Bernie Madoff, in his new book on the $65-billion Madoff Ponzi scheme, “No One Would Listen.”  Still, they kept investing.

Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, upon the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s disclosure of a report that found taxi drivers were pushing the button on the meter of their cabs so as to charge the … Continue reading →

Former Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn upon his admission that he had indeed paid a woman $150,000 in 2002 in exchange for her promise to keep quiet about their naked hot-tubbing 25 years earlier when she was 15 and an … Continue reading →

William Schlich, former lead partner on Ernst & Young Lehman team. June 5, 2008.  In July, 2008, the E&Y team told Lehman’s audit committee that the allegations were unfounded and immaterial. Lehman would file for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008.