Businesspeople From New York City

"This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism; Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be. He knows he has never been loved."

"He learned to become the killer... who needs to succeed at all costs, who recognizes that other people are expendable, who does not need to take responsibility, who will do anything to get attention, financial rewards and "to win.""

"Nobody has failed upward as consistently and spectacularly as the ostensible leader of the free world."

"Donald today is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning, or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses, or take in and synthesize information."

"The full-page screed he paid to publish in the New York Times in 1989 calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death wasn't about his deep concern for the rule of law; it was an easy opportunity for him to take on a deeply serious topic that was very important to the city while sounding like an authority in the influential and prestigious pages of the Gray Lady. It was unvarnished racism meant to stir up racial animosity in a city already seething with it. All five boys... were subsequently cleared, proven innocent via incontrovertible DNA evidence. To this day, however, Donald insists that they were guilty—yet another example of his inability to drop a preferred narrative even when it's contradicted by established fact."

"[T]here are so many parallels between the circumstances in which my family operated, and in which this country is now operating. I saw... what focusing on the wrong things, elevating the wrong people, can do... the collateral damage that can be created by allowing somebody to live their lives without accountability... continuing now, on a much grander scale."

"In order to get Donald, his psychopathologies, and the meaning of his dysfunctional behavior, we need a thorough family history."

"After a decade during which Donald floundered, dragged down by bankruptcies and reduced to fronting for... failed products... The Apprentice traded on Donald's image as a brash, self-made deal-maker, a myth that had been the creation of my grandfather... that astonishingly, considering the vast trove of evidence disproving it, had survived into the new millennium... [I]n 2015, a significant percentage of the American population had been primed to believe..."

"I have no problem calling Donald a narcissist—he meets all nine crieria outlined in the ' (DSM-5)—but the label gets us only so far. ...A case could be made that he also meets the criteria for antisocial disorder... [which] can also refer to chronic criminality, arrogance, and disregard for the rights of others. ...Donald may also meet some of the criteria for dependent ...an inability to make decisions or take responsibility ... He may have a long undiagnosed ..."

"While [hundreds of] thousands of Americans die alone, Donald touts stock market gains. As my father lay dying alone, Donald went to the movies. If he can in any way profit from your death, he'll facilitate it... then he'll ignore the fact that you died."

"[[Lying|[L]ies]], misrepresentations, and fabrications are the sum total of who my uncle is..."

"When Maryanne's turn came, she said, "... We've come a long way since that night when Freddy dumped a bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald's head because he was such a brat." Everybody familiar with the legendary mashed potato story laughed- everyone except Donald, who listened with his arms crossed tightly and a scowl on his face, as he did whenever Maryanne mentioned it. It upset him, as if he were a seven-year-old boy. He clearly still felt the sting of that long-ago humiliation."

"His ability to control unfavorable situations by lying, spinning, and obfuscating has diminished to the point of impotence in the face of the tragedies we are currently facing. ...His egregious ...mishandling of the current catastrophe has led to a level of pushback and scrutiny that he's never experienced before, increasing his belligerence and need for petty revenge as he withholds vital funding... from... governors who don't kiss his ass sufficiently."

"[] had no empathy. He was... driven in a way that turned other people, including [family]... into pawns to be used to his own ends. If somebody could be of service... he would use them. If they couldn't be, he excised them."

"If I can do anything to change the narrative, and to tell the truth, I need to do that because I don't believe the American people had the entire truth 4 years ago."

"Everything's about money in this family, but I'm also different... [M]oney stood in for everything else; it was literally the only currency the family trafficked in... I knew that it was also about love, and to be disinherited... shut out entirely... was to be told quite explicitly that you don't count, and you are not loved."

"Donald tried his very best not to be destroyed in the way my dad was... so he ended up with a very narrow range in which he could safely operate as a human being; so it's created this quite dangerous situation."

"He's utterly incapable of leading this country, and it's dangerous to allow him to do so."

"[] thought that because [Donald Trump] was a man without principle, nobody would vote for him. She was horrified by the white evangelical embrace of his candidacy because she knew that he had no deep convictions about religion... and considered going to church a photo-op."

"Unfortunately for Donald, he could be of use... Donald had many years of watching my father be the wrong one. ...Clearly he learned the lesson from watching his almost 8 year old brother be punished for being kind... generous... sensitive, for having interests outside of what my grandfather thought was acceptable. ...[H]ang out with his friends... boat and fish and fly... He was not a killer."

"Donald's need for affirmation is so great that he doesn't seem to notice that the largest group of his supporters are people he wouldn't condescend to be seen with outside of a rally."

"His deep-seated insecurities have created in him a black hole of need that constantly requires the light of compliments that disappears as soon as he's soaked it in. Nothing is ever enough."

"I can't say that there was a last straw... but... the horrors at the border, the separating of children from their parents, the torture, the kidnapping and the incarceration... in cages was unthinkable, unbearable... I needed to take a leap."

"To hedge his bets he enlisted Joe Shapiro, a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his s for him. That was much easier to pull off in the days before photo IDs and computerized records. Donald, who never lacked for funds, paid his buddy well."

"We thought the blatant racism on display during Donald's announcement speech would be a deal breaker, but we were disabused of that idea when Jerry Falwell, Jr., and other white evangelicals started endorsing him. Maryanne, a devout Catholic since her conversion five decades earlier, was incensed. "What the fuck is wrong with them?" she said. "The only time Donald went to church was when the cameras were there. It's mind boggling. He has no principles. None!""

"Nothing Donald said during the campaign—from his disparagement... to his mocking... —deviated from my expectation... I was reminded of every family meal I'd ever attended during which Donald talked about... ugly fat slobs or... losers... [C]asual of people was commonplace at the Trump dinner table. What did surprise me was that he was getting away with it."

"Money is the only currency in the family. ...It literally stands in for everything else: love, affection, respect. It's understandable that... my family members would cling to it so desperately, and want to acquire it."

"Dr. Doom is back—and age has done nothing to soften his views. ...In a speech on Wednesday evening to the National Economists Club in Washington... Kaufman argued that efforts to stabilize the financial system following the financial crisis may actually have heightened risks by encouraging more debt and increasing concentration among too-big-to-fail institutions. .. that financial innovations, such as securitization, have mainly spurred an explosion of debt, much of it for speculative purposes. ...As the quantity of credit has exploded, its quality has fallen... Deregulation fundamentally changed... from the era of clear divides between commercial and investment banking and government-set interest-rate caps. Regulation has been insufficient to balance “entrepreneurship and fiduciary responsibility,”... which was checked when Wall Street firms were partnerships, with partners’ net worth on the line."

"[F]inancial markets are... a microcosm of the people and societies they serve. ...The extremes of market movements reflect the extremes of human nature and human emotion—from optimism and elation to pessimism and despair. In financial markets—as in life—rationality prevails most of the time."

"Besides his business activities, Dr. Kaufman is active in a number of public and educational organizations, including New York University, Tel-Aviv University, the Institute of International Education, the Norton Museum of Art, the Jewish Museum, the UJA Federation, the Animal Medical Center, the Economic Club of New York, and the International Advisory Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences."

"[A]n economy cannot grow and thrive without a strong commercial and investment banking infrastructure. Without the ability to create debt and equity instruments, the world's economies would not have advanced beyond their most rudimentary forms."

"[R]icher nations have larger stock and bond markets than poorer ones, and the assets of financial intermediaries are much larger in relation to GDP."

"[F]inancial markets can be considered one of the great wonders of the world."

"[F]inancial markets have evolved at least as dramatically as... manufacturing, work, technology, education, and business regulation since the turn of the previous century."

"[D]uring the ... the federal government took large strides to regulate corporate America. ...[T]he federal government managed to break up several trusts (including the , American Tobacco, and ) and to establish the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve. In our time, business consolidation is evoking no similar reaction."

"[T]he most striking feature of America's Gilded Age banking and financial markets is their lack of regulation. Wall Street was periodically upended by... colorful figures such as , Jim Fiske, and Jay Gould to manipulate prices and corner markets. The only force countervailing against such panics was a handful of more responsible investors, most notably J. P. Morgan... [who] engineered a successful rescue operation after the ... That episode inspired Congress to begin... plans for a central bank. After all, Morgan couldn't live forever."

"[T]he nation's middle class was about to embark on an educational revolution that would help boost incomes to unimagined levels over the next three generations. ...Along with the obvious benefits to... individuals, education yielded enormous social and economic returns. Economists have found universal public education in America to be one of the leading engines of economic growth."

"In 1900, industrial workers toiled 10 hours a day, 6 days a week and earning an average of $375 dollars a year. ...[W]orking conditions were typically unsanitary, unsafe, and often fatal, and there were few protections—whether from unions (...a meager 5 percent of industrial workers), employers, or government. ...[S]tate and federal governments frequently trotted out their armed militias to help suppress striking laborers. ...[W]hites lived an average of only 47 years, blacks a mere 33."

"In the 1890s and 1810s corporate consolidation inspired an enormous public outcry against the "trusts" (...big business). Newspapers overflowed with editorial deriding... "robber barons," and for the first time in American history the federal government stepped in to regulate... First came the ... designed to limit discriminatory railroad rates, and then the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890—Congresses' first attempt to constrain monopolistic practices. In practice, both acts proved to be weak against the predominant power of big business. For decades, the courts in effect made regulatory policy in how they interpreted... these two..."

"The federal made some efforts at regulation in 1900, by passing the Gold Standard Act, which allowed state banks to set up branches in small towns and ended the bimetalism debate by establishing gold as the only redeemable metal. Still, the vast majority of banks were local, single unit operations, and access to capital and credit... increasingly difficult as... business enterprises expanded rapidly."

"The professor that had the most influence on me was Marcus Nadler. ...As a teacher he had a rare ability to break down complex subjects into more palatable and understandable points. ...[H]e had a great capacity to simplify, to turn abstract ideas into practical applications. ...His lectures helped shape my belief that financial institutions and markets must balance entrepreneurial drive with responsibility. And his fairness and openness to opposing points of view influenced me to conclude that no one school of economic thought has a monopoly on wisdom."

"What fascinated me about Drucker, and still does, is how he infuses his broad perspective on business issues with philosophical and historical considerations."

"Billy Salomon... along with Charles Simon and Sidney Homer predicted... that research would become a critical function of the firm. ... Sidney was given a free hand in creating a bond market research operation. Years later, he wrote a... memoir... Fun with Bonds. Sidney was taken into the firm as a general partner when he was nearly 60 years old. ...such a step would be impossible today ...Sidney wrote with great clarity. ...I later came to appreciate his great historical sensibilities when he asked me to review and edit a draft of a book... A History of Interest Rates... covering 40 centuries and 40 nations. When Sidney and I met... he was looking for an assistant to help him build a research department devoted solely to money and bond markets."

"[A] profit and loss statement is not simply a collection of figures, but rather—for the perceptive banker—a window into the nuts and bolts of the business, from its method of operation to its management philosophy."

"[A] balance sheet is a snapshot of one moment in time, and thus presents a very limited view... To be a good banker, therefore, a business is much more than its balance sheet."

"[G]ood bankers understand the shortcomings of accounting and know how to correct for them."

"Salomon's growth over the next generation would astound even its most optimistic partners. ...And as we would all see to our amazement, Salomon's rise was reflected in broader and equally dramatic transformations in the financial markets—as credit burgeoned, financial crises occasionally rocked the markets, prices and interest rates moved with new volatility, institutions underwent massive shifts, and monetary policy emerged as the dominant force in sustaining economic growth."

"Often the real value of management decisions does not become apparent until many years later. Perhaps what we should do is try to analyze the impact of decisions in any one period on longer-term performance. In the political arena, for example, why should we emphasize the skill and acumen of national policy-makers only on the new initiatives they introduce and legislate? Sometimes the events that do not materialize are more important than those that do. We should try to ascertain what decisions political leaders are undertaking that will benefit their nations subsequent to their terms in office."

"Judgements on the performance of our economy require a clearly defined objective. Too often... there are multiple and contradictory objectives. Unless we are clear on our... objectives, we are not able to evaluate performance as good or bad..."

"I take great pride in being an American. Consequently, when financial excess threatens our economic moorings, and thus our extraordinary dynamic and pluralistic nation, I have often spoken out for saner behavior and more effective policies."