83 quotes found
"150 years ago, the business corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. Today, it is all-pervasive. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution. This documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts, and possible futures of the modern business corporation. Initially given a narrow legal mandate, what has allowed today's corporation to achieve such extraordinary power and influence over our lives? We begin our inquiry as scandals threaten to trigger a wide debate about the lack of public control over big corporations."
"Through the voices of CEOs, whistle blowers, brokers, gurus and spies, insiders and outsiders, we present the corporation as a paradox, an institution that creates great wealth, but causes enormous, and often hidden harms."
"To determine the kind of personality that drives the corporation to behave like an externalising machine, we can analyse it like a psychiatrist would a patient. We can even formulate a diagnosis, on the basis of typical case histories of harm it has inflicted on others selected from a universe of corporate activity."
"Having acquired the legal rights and protections of a person, the question arises - what kind of person is the corporation?"
"The dominant role of corporations in our lives is essentially a product of roughly the past century. Corporations were originally associations of people who were chartered by a state to perform some particular function. Like a group of people want to build a bridge over the Charles River, or something like that."
"Corporations were given the rights of immortal persons. But then special kinds of persons, persons who had no moral conscience. These are a special kind of persons, which are designed by law, to be concerned only for their stockholders. And not, say, what are sometimes called their stakeholders, like the community or the work force or whatever."
"Robert Keyes: The word corporate gets attached in almost, you know, in a pejorative sense to and gets married with the word "a-gen-da." And one hears a lot about the corporate a-gen-da as though it is evil, as though it is an agenda, which is trying to take over the world. Personally, I don't use the word "corporation." I use the word "business." I will use the word... use the word "company." I will use the words "business community" because I think that is a much fairer representation than zeroing in on just this word "corporation.""
"Ray Anderson: The modern corporation has grown out of the industrial age. The industrial age began in 1712 when an Englishman named Thomas Newcomen invented a steam driven pump to pump water out of the English coal mine, so the English coal miners could get more coal to mine, rather than hauling buckets of water out of the mine. It was all about productivity, more coal per man-hour. That was the dawn of the industrial age. And then it became more steel per man-hour, more textiles per man-hour, more automobiles per man-hour, and today, it's more chips per man-hour, more gizmos per man-hour. The system is basically the same, producing more sophisticated products today."
"Mary Zepernick: There were very few chartered corporations in early United States history. And the ones that existed had clear stipulations in their state issued charters, how long they could operate, the amount of capitalisation, what they made or did or maintained, a turnpike or whatever was in their charter and they didn't do anything else. They didn't own or couldn't own another corporation. Their shareholders were liable. And so on."
"Richard Grossman: In both law and the culture, the corporation was considered a subordinate entity that was a gift from the people in order to serve the public good. So you have that history, and we shouldn't be misled by it, it's not as if these were the halcyon days, when all corporations served the public trust, but there's a lot to learn from that."
"Robert Monks: The great problem of having corporate citizens is that they aren't like the rest of us. As Baron Thurlow in England is supposed to have said, "They have no soul to save, and they have no body to incarcerate." (and) The corporation is an externalizing* machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine. *(moving its costs to external organizations and people)"
"Michael Moore: I believe the mistake that a lot of people make when they think about corporations, is they think you know, corporations are like us. They think they have feelings, they have politics, they have belief systems, they really only have one thing, the bottom line - how to make as much money as they can in any given quarter. That's it."
"Ira Jackson: The eagle, soaring, clear-eyed, competitive, prepared to strike, but not a vulture. Noble, visionary, majestic, that people can believe in and be inspired by, that creates such a lift that it soars. I can see that being a good logo for the principled company. Okay, guys, enough bullshit."
"Oscar Olivera: At the climax of the struggle, the army stayed in their barracks; the police also remained in their stations; the members of Congress became invisible; the Governor went into hiding, and afterwards, he resigned. There wasn't any authority left. The only legitimate authority was the people gathered at the city square making decisions in large assemblies."
"Between 1998 and 2008 the financial industry spent over $5 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions. And since the crisis, they're spending even more."
"After the crisis, the financial industry, including the Financial Services Roundtable, worked harder than ever to fight reform. The financial sector employs 3,000 lobbyists, more than five for each member of Congress."
"The Bush administration sharply reduced taxes on investment gains, stock dividends and eliminated the estate tax."
"The financial industry also exerts its influence in a more subtle way, one that most Americans don't know about: It has corrupted the study of economics itself."
"Inequality of wealth in the United States is now higher than in any other developed country."
"Most of the benefits of these tax cuts went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans."
"For the first time in history, average Americans have less education and are less prosperous than their parents."
"For decades the American financial system was stable and safe. But then something changed. The financial industry turned its back on society, corrupted our political system and plunged the world economy into crisis. At enormous cost, we've avoided disaster and are recovering. But the men and institutions that caused the crisis are still in power and that needs to change. They will tell us that we need them and that what they do is too complicated for us to understand. They will tell us it won't happen again. They will spend billions fighting reform. It won't be easy. But some things are worth fighting for."
"The presidents of Harvard University and Columbia University refused to comment on academic conflicts of interest. - Both declined to be interviewed for this film."
"We had a comprehensive plan that, when enacted, has left nearly $1.1 trillion in the hands of American workers, families, investors and small-business owners."
"You don't have to have a lousy home. The low-income home buyer can have just as nice a house as anybody else."
"When I first came to office, I thought taxes were too high, and they were."
"We're gonna keep growing. Okay? And, obviously, I'll say it: 'If you're growing, you're not in recession, right? I mean, we all know that.'"
"Chuck Prince of Citibank famously said: 'That we have to dance until the music stops.' Actually, the music had stopped already when he said that."
"Why do you have big banks? Well, because banks like monopoly power; because banks like lobbying power; because, banks know that when they're too big, they will be bailed."
"Why should a financial engineer be paid four times to 100 times more than a real engineer? A real engineer build bridges. A financial engineer build dreams. And, you know, when those dreams turn out to be nightmares, other people pay for it"
"You're gonna make an extra $2 million a year, or $10 million a year for putting your financial institution at risk. Someone else pays the bill, you don't. Would you make that bet? Most people on Wall Street said, 'Sure, I'd make that bet.'"
"Recently, neuroscientists have done experiments where they've taken individuals and put them into an MRI machine. And they have them play a game where the prize is money. And they noticed that when these subjects earn money, the part of the brain that gets stimulated is the same part that cocaine stimulates."
"You come to us today telling us "We're sorry. We won't do it again. Trust us". Well I have some people in my constituency that actually robbed some of your banks, and they say the same thing."
"Addressing Obama and, quote, 'regulatory reform' - my response, if it was one word, would be 'ha!' There's very little reform... It's a Wall Street government."
"I had a friend who was a bond trader at Merrill Lynch in the 1970s. He had a job as a train conductor at night, 'cause he had three kids and couldn't support them on what a bond trader made. By 1986, he was making millions of dollars, and thought it was because he was smart."
"Matt Damon as Self - Narrator (voice)"
"Gylfi Zoega as Self - Professor of Economics, University of Iceland"
"Andri Snær Magnasonas Self - Writer & Filmmaker"
"Sigridur Benediktsdottir as Self - Special Investigative Committee, Icelandic Parliament"
"Paul Volcker as Self - Former Federal Reserve Chairman"
"Dominique Strauss-Kahn as Self - Managing Director, International Monetary Fund"
"George Soros as Self - Chairman, Soros Fund Management"
"Barney Frank as Self - Chairman, Financial Services Committee"
"David McCormick as Self - Under Secretary of the Treasury, Bush Administration"
"Scott Talbott as Self - Chief Lobbyist, Financial Services Roundtable"
"Andrew Sheng as Self - Chief Adviser, China Banking Regulatory Commission"
"Lee Hsien Loong as Self - Prime Minister, Singapore (as Hsien Loong Lee)"
"Christine Lagarde as Self - Finance Minister, France"
"Gillian Tett as Self - U.S. Managing Editor, The Financial Times"
"Nouriel Roubini as Self - Professor, NYU Business School"
"R. Glenn Hubbard as Self - Chief Economic Adviser, Bush Administration"
"Eliot Spitzer as Self - Former Governor, New York"
"Samuel Hayes as Self - Professor Emeritus of Investment Banking, Harvard Business School"
"Charles Morris as Self - Author, The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown"
"Robert Gnaizda as Self - Former Director, Greenlining Institute"
"Willem Buiter as Self - Chief Economist, Citigroup"
"Andrew Lo as Self - Professor & Director, MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering"
"Michael Greenberger as Self - Former Deputy Director, Commodity Futures Trading Commission"
"Satyajit Das as Self - Derivatives Consultant"
"Frank Partnoy as Self - Professor of Law & Finance, University of California, San Diego"
"Eric Halperin as Self - Director, Center for Responsible Learning"
"Martin Wolf as Self - Chief Economics Commentator, The Financial Times"
"Kenneth Rogoff as Self - Professor of Economics, Harvard (as Prof. Ken Rogoff)"
"Daniel Alpert as Self - Managing Director, Westwood Capital"
"Raghuram Rajan as Self - Chief Economist, International Monetary Fund"
"Lawrence McDonald as Self - Former Vice President, Lehman Brothers"
"Harvey Miller as Self - Lehman's Bankruptcy Lawyer"
"Jeffrey Lane as Self - Vice Chairman, Lehman Brothers"
"Jonathan Alpert as Self - Therapist"
"Kristin Davis as Self - Manhattan Madam"
"Allan Sloan as Self - Senior Editor, Fortune Magazine"
"William Ackman as Self - Hedge Fund Manager (as Bill Ackman)"
"Jerome Fons as Self - Former Managing Director, Moody's Rating Agency"
"Frederic Mishkin as Self - Governor, Federal Reserve"
"Simon Johnson as Self - Professor, MIT"
"Joanna Xu as Self - Former Factory Worker"
"Patrick Daniel as Self - Editor-in-Chief, Singapore Press Holdings"
"Columba Ramos as Self - Victim of Fraud"
"Eric Evanouskas as Self - Volunteer, Catholic Charities"
"Steven A. Stephen as Self - Former Construction Worker"
"Martin Feldstein as Self - Professor of Economics, Harvard"
"John Campbell as Self - Chairman, Harvard Economics Department"
"The global economic crisis of 2008 cost tens of millions of people their savings, their jobs, and their homes. This is how it happened."