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Best Business-Related Quotes of 2009

Written by: suzanne rodriguez 632 views

What a year! Yes, of course, there were certainly a few bright spots. But for the most part the entire year seemed to be about the economy, the loss of jobs, people losing their homes, and the lack of credit: money, money, money. As 2009 hobbles off, is there anyone who doesn’t yearn to shout “Good Riddance!” and slam the door behind it? Here’s to a better year for all of us in 2010.

Meanwhile, enjoy my roundup of the Best Business-Related Quotes for the year we will soon be rid of:

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• “An error of judgment.” (Ponzi swindler Bernie Madoff’s explanation for his multi-billion-dollar investment fraud, the biggest ripoff in Wall Street history.)

• “I wish they caught me six years ago, eight years ago.” (Bernie Madoff again, this time in an interview with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This was the No. 10 quote for the year on Time Magazine’s poll of Top 10 Quotes.)

Warren Buffet

• “It’s fallen off a cliff.” (Billionaire investor Warren Buffet describing the U. S. economy last March.)

• “This is all happening because my father didn’t buy me a train set as a kid.” (Warren Buffett redux, interviewed early in November after his company, Berkshire Hathaway, purchased Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad for $26 billion.)

• “We’re going to have no paper, no printing plants, no unions. It’s going to be great!” (Media mogul Rupert Murdoch enthusing over the eventual replacement of newspapers by electronic devices like the Amazon Kindle.)

• “My piggy bank is not entitled to TARP funds. My piggy bank is not entitled to TARP funds. My piggy bank is…” (Bad boy Bart Simpson, writing on a classroom blackboard)

Martha Stewart

• “How can I kick myself? There are other people to be kicked.” (Martha Stewart’s response on Nightline last November, when asked about the insider-trading scandal that sent her to jail a few years earlier and reportedly cost her company more than a billion dollars. Who can deny the truth of what she says? Stewart spent 5 months in jail for her small-potatoes insider trading, but the geniuses who brought down the world’s economy through greed, chicanery and outright crime are not only walking around free but taking multi-million-dollar bonuses!)

• “I had to hold my nose and stop those firms from failing.” (Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the U. S. Federal Reserve, explaining in August that he used taxpayer money to bail out firms like AIG because he feared a second Great Depression.)

• “It makes me angry. I slammed the phone more than a few times on discussing AIG.” (Another bit of insight into Ben Bernanke’s thinking about AIG, this time in March on the CBS program, 60 Minutes.)

• “Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity.’” (Pope Benedict XVI calling for global economic reform in a July 6 Vatican Encyclical.)

Bernie Madoff on the cover of New York Magazine

• “I left a legacy of shame. It is something I will live with for the rest of my life.” (Who else? Bernard Madoff, again. This time he’s apologizing at his sentencing hearing in July.)

• “There’s an app for that.” (Apple’s advertising slogan for the iPhone. In 2009, Apps became huge.)

• “I don’t know anything about cars.” (Edward Whitacre Jr., newly appointed chairman of GM last June.)

• “When you face such an overwhelming challenge as global climate change, it can be daunting; it’s kind of like trying to lose weight.” (U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last May)

• “There is a real difference between managing and leading. … Managing winds up being the allocation of resources against tasks. Leadership focuses on people. My definition of a leader is someone who helps people succeed.” (Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo!)

• “In the end this is a symptom of a larger problem, a bubble-and-bust economy that valued reckless speculation over responsibility and hard work.” (President Barack Obama last March, expressing anger at $165 million in bonuses insurance giant AIG planned to pay executives after being given a $180 billion taxpayers’ bailout to stay afloat.)

• “I am deeply sorry and ashamed. I knew what I was doing was wrong—indeed, criminal.” Ooops! Bernie Madoff yet again, discussing his $65 billion swindle.

• “He [Madoff] is going to be sentenced for 150 years. I hope he lives a long life.” (Accountant Richard Friedman discussing his feelings about Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme swindled $3 million of Friedman’s money.

• “It’s the inhumanity of this man, that he can go around depriving people of their livelihoods.” (Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel discussing Bernie Madoff, who swindled Wiesel’s charitable foundation out of $15.2 million.)

President Barack Obama

• “I’m happy to get good ideas from across the political spectrum, from Democrats and Republicans. What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested, and they have failed. And that’s what part of the election in November was all about.” (President Barack Obama during his first official press conference in February. This was the No. 3 quote for the year on Time’s poll of Top 10 Quotes.)

• “This package that he’s going to sign is our bridge over troubled waters.” (Former U. S. President Bill Clinton in an NBC interview last Frebruary, praising Obama’s economic recovery plan.)

• “If there ever comes a day when Steve wants to retire or for other reasons cannot continue to fulfill his duties as Apple’s CEO, you will know it.” (Apple statement responding to rumors about the then-failing health of CEO Steve Jobs.)

© Suzanne Rodriguez

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