Kurt Eichenwald Quotes

Enron was becoming a virtual cult of creativity, often placing swagger over substance. New ideas were celebrated for their newness, for their potential; tried and true businesses like the pipelines were almost derided.

Excuse me, Ben," Bowen said. "Am I wrong, or aren't you the corporate treasurer?"
Glisan bristled. "Yes."
"What do you mean, you think you can get one?" Bowen shot back. "This is the current fucking maturities schedule! Go get it. You have to have a maturities schedule!"
But they didn't. With all the focus on deals and earnings- with finance group's transformation into a profit center rather than a division to support the business- the workday, boring details had been sloughed off.
p. 560

According to the Epilepsy Foundation of America, there are more than two million Americans with epilepsy. Half have what I have, idiopathic epilepsy, meaning there is no known cause for the seizures.

As late as 2007, Facebook was still trying to figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up. An advertising space seemed to be the obvious answer, but how that would tap into the massive value of the personal data uploaded to the company every day remained a puzzle.

I am an Obamacare agnostic - if it works, as I hope it will for the good of the nation, then it's a great thing. If it doesn't, then that is a disappointing thing, and we need to try something else.

I've often thought that Obama should come out in favor of oxygen, just to see how many right-wingers keel over from holding their breath for too long.

A eureka moment. It suddenly struck Mintz as so obvious. The executives entrusted with reviewing all of the LJM transactions- Causey, Buy, the board- approached their duties casually, giving everything just the onceover. They seemed to figure that somebody else was doing the tough analysis. But no one was.
p.389

There were plenty of reasons to suspect Obamacare might have been a colossal failure - although none of them had to do with death panels, huge lines for treatment, a government takeover of health care, etc.

Until his dying days, Steve Jobs could not only predict the direction the marketplace would be heading, but help drive it there.

At any time of day, hundreds of different versions of Facebook are running on the Internet - with a changed color here, a moved button there - and the user response to each variation is measured. And the same is done with advertising.

There have been times that I have found myself in places, and I don't know how I got there, and I don't actually know where I am.

I have always trusted my impulses. I have always believed that once I'm in the circumstances, whatever they may be, I will find the right way.

The doctor gave me several warnings: Never tell anyone unless necessary, because I might be ostracized. Call it 'seizure disorder,' not epilepsy, because fewer people would be frightened. Try to choose a profession as free from stress as possible.

Plenty of gun opponents have pointed out the obvious: that the Founding Fathers could never have envisioned the kinds of 'arms' that exist today - Washington, Jefferson, and the rest had never even seen a bullet. Musket balls for guns that required constant reloading were the 'arms' of the day.

All anti-abortion protesters should be presented, on the spot, with an application to sign up as foster parents. They should also be given the names of children in their area in need of adoptive parents. And if they won't sign or volunteer, they should shut up.

Too often, it seems, conservatives have scorned experts as incompetent, biased, or otherwise worth ignoring because they came up with answers that didn't fit their politically desired answer. Often, they proclaim experts have a liberal bias. Of course, plenty of Democrats have voted for conservative ideas, but that is beside the point.

Bitcoins are not a real investment; they are bets inside a casino. If the price goes back up, don't be fooled. In the parlance of popping investment bubbles, it's something called a 'dead-cat bounce.' People who are desperate to keep the game going rush back in, hoping to bring the price back up, but it never lasts.

The myth that people with epilepsy swallow their tongues is very injurious. When I had seizures without my roommates present, I would often wake up with my gums bleeding, my teeth hurting or my jaw aching. Often, well-intentioned people, believing I would choke on my tongue, tried to force open my clenched jaw to put in a hard object.

Plenty of people detested Michael Jackson before his death wiped away the world's collective memory. Timberlake was originally dismissed as just another boy-bander. Legions have joined in a 'Hate Anne Hathaway' movement. Elvis, the Rolling Stones, Kristen Bell, even Mozart had haters.

I have no problem with responsible gun owners who own weapons for self-protection, hunting, or just sport. The ones who believe they have a constitutional right to 100-round magazines to fight off I don't know what - a zombie apocalypse? - try to shut down dialogue with threats and other macho posing because of their flawed beliefs.

Bitcoins are not an investment. They are an investment fad that someday could be a real digital currency, but if they continue to behave as they have, they will instead be nothing.

Basically, whenever someone says they're wrong, conservatives too often fall back on claims that those who disagree with them are biased and thus worthy of being ignored, a convenient position that allows them to avoid debating uncomfortable criticisms.

Whenever someone says zygotes are babies, I reply: 'Imagine a thousand zygotes in test tubes in one room, and three toddlers in another. A fire breaks out, and you only have time to get to one room. Which would you save from burning - the zygotes or the children?'

Assess Bitcoins? All you can do is examine the trading patterns, which do not provide a real analysis of any underlying economic value. The economics of investments are not solely based on supply and demand, and that is all that goes into Bitcoin prices.

If Republicans truly are dedicated to the sanctity of life, they should be the first ones on the front lines trying to get policies for the uninsured.

I've long thought that Marco Rubio would make a strong G.O.P. candidate for president. While he was brought into office by surfing on the Tea Party wave, he has proven himself not to be wedded to the frequent lunacy of those folks.

When 'Christians' cite the Bible as the basis for secular policies, they must explain why they believe Muslims in the Middle East are evil for doing the same with the Koran.

No one - not a conservative or liberal or whatever - can stand back and 'define' what marriage means. Other people's marriages have nothing to do with mine; whether my neighbors are divorced or gay or widowed will not lead me to change anything about how my wife and I deal with each other or how we raise our children.

To a degree, the West is reaping what it sowed from a major strategic blunder in the aftermath of 9/11 - the entire concept of a war on technique, that is, terrorism. Defining the enemy when fighting a concept was impossible.

Uninsured people don't just slink off into a corner and die. They seek treatment, but usually when it is an emergency, and this will be the most expensive kind of care available.

When it comes to the teapot tempest that is the Hillary Clinton email imbroglio, the real controversy isn't about politics or regulations. It's about journalism and the weak standards employed to manufacture the scandal du jour.

Bitcoins can be traded or used for purchases, but only with those sellers who will accept them. Because it is a system independent of external meddling, there can be no sudden devaluation of Bitcoins through the actions of governments.

When the Bill of Rights was written, no one owned a MAG5100, 100-round magazine for an M-16. The concept of a mass slaughter carried out over a matter of minutes was incomprehensible.

Enron would keep its unearned windfall, generated solely because David Duncan didn't know what he was doing.

The bottom-line message of history is that if you're doubling and tripling your money in record time, you're also more likely to lose it all.

A war on Al-Qaeda could have been won with a decisive military strike in Tora Bora during December 2001, but American fighters at Tora Bora were refused requests for more forces when they trapped Al-Qaeda there; the Pentagon was busy husbanding resources for the Iraqi invasion.

Obamacare is socialism? Nope - as insurance companies vie to sell new policies, competition within private industry is growing rapidly, with the number of participating insurers growing by 26 percent between 2014 and 2015, and the number of products they offer growing by 66 percent.