I bet Richard Fuld doesn't have an ounce of contrition. It's just megalomania. When it's like that, you need rules to prevent catastrophe. When banks are borrowing the government's credit rating, you need rules to prevent stupid things.
Charlie MungerThe cash register did more for human morality than the Congregational Church. It was a really powerful phenomenon to make an economic system work better, just as, in reverse, a system that can be easily defrauded ruins a civilization. A system that's very hard to defraud, like a cash register, helped the economic performance of a civilization by reducing vice, but very few people within economics talk about it in those terms.
Charlie MungerFinding a single investment that will return 20% per year for 40 years tends to happen only in dreamland. In the real world, you uncover an opportunity, and then you compare other opportunities with that. And you only invest in the most attractive opportunities. That's your opportunity cost. That's what you learn in freshman economics. The game hasn't changed at all. That's why Modern Portfolio Theory is so asinine.
Charlie MungerI think we have lost our way when people like the [board of] governors and the CEO of the NYSE fail to realize they have a duty to the rest of us to act as exemplars... You do not want your first-grade school teacher to be fornicating on the floor or drinking booze in the classroom; similarly you do not want your stock exchange to be setting the wrong moral example.
Charlie Munger