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On Wall Street, fraudulent schemes tend to thrive during economic booms, and to blow up when times turn tough.

James Surowiecki

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James Surowiecki
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 30
Journalist
Writer
Meriden
Connecticut
James Michael Surowiecki
Times
Tend
Street
Tough
Streets
Booms
Wall
Fraudulent
Turn
Schemes
Economic
Thrive
Turns
Blow

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If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars.
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Behavioral economists have shown that a sizable percentage of people are willing to pay real money to punish people who are taking from a common pot but not contributing to it. Just to insure that shirkers get what they deserve, we are prepared to make ourselves poorer.
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In the struggle between capital and labor, more often than not capital has won, because the real source of value for most companies has historically been the hard assets that they owned and controlled.
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Medical tourism can be considered a kind of import: instead of the product coming to the consumer, as it does with cars or sneakers, the consumer is going to the product.
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In confusing stock options with ownership, corporations confuse trappings with substance.
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Of course, presidents are always blamed or rewarded for the state of the economy.
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Critics of consumer capitalism like to think that consumers are manipulated and controlled by those who seek to sell them things, but for the most part it's the other way around: companies must make what consumers want and deliver it at the lowest possible price.
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The typical American corporation is a shareholders' republic the same way that China is a peoples' republic.
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Of course, plenty of people don't think that guaranteeing affordable health insurance is a core responsibility of government.
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When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren't factored in to the pump price - among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents.
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Nike used to be known as Blue Ribbon Sports. What's now Sara Lee used to be Consolidated Foods. And Exxon was once Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. These were name changes that worked. But for all the ones that do, there are 10 or 20 that don't.
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In industries where a lot of competitors are selling the same product - mangoes, gasoline, DVD players - price is the easiest way to distinguish yourself. The hope is that if you cut prices enough you can increase your market share, and even your profits. But this works only if your competitors won't, or can't, follow suit.
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