We don't invest in financial literacy in a meaningful way. We should be teaching elementary school children how to balance a checkbook, how to do basic accounting, why it's important to pay your bills on time. First, education. Begin the learning process as early as possible, in elementary school. Second, encourage and support entrepreneurism. Third, policy. I know it's a priority of the US Treasury to augment financial inclusion and increase financial literacy.
We need to have financial literacy in America, not just complaining about obstructionism. We need solutions. And I think the solutions are using high finance to make capitalism work for people around the world.
The challenge of our generation, whether it's young lawyers, young investment bankers, is to make capitalism work for people not just around the corner, but for people all around the world.
"Begin with where you are." Everyone is looking to get ahead, but you get ahead by doing well at the things that are immediately in front of you.Start with the people around you, learn from them, and invest in them.
I think the money for the solutions for global poverty is on Wall Street. Wall Street allocates capital. And we need to get capital to the ideas that are successful, whether it's microfinance, whether it's through financial literacy programs, Wall Street can be the engine that makes capital get to the people who need it.
When you go to a Japense wedding, make sure that you tie the ribbon on the present tightly because if you don't, you may imply that you don't think the marriage will last.
It's ok to say I don't know. Realizing this earlier in my career would have put me more at ease.
It is important to understand that the most important currency is social debt. Doing things for others. In order to get, you have to give.
Reputation will become an even more important currency in the future.
The oldest and most important currency is debt.
In essence, money gives us the calories we need to survive. Over time, we became aware that exchange and cooperation increase our chances for survival. Eventually we create tools to facilitate trade. One of these tools is called money.
Money is really like blood. You need it to live but it isn't the point of life.
Just the idea of making money can increase your skin conductancy, meaning there's a current of excitement.
On a biological level, the brain registers money as something valuable - even a dollar bill which has no intrinsic value, it's just paper.
All organisms rely on exchange. They form symbiotic partnerships in order to obtain the energy that they need to survive. Energy is the currency of nature.
Gone is the day where you work at a job for thirty years and retire. Millennials jump around and switch careers. I think it's important for CEOs to highlight career mobility within a company, so that employees don't get bored and continue to be stimulated.
Money numbs your senses. People who touched paper money and then placed their hands in hot burning water didn't feel as much pain as those who hadn't touched money.
All decisions originate in the brain. So if we can better understand what's happening in the brain when we make investment decisions, maybe one day we'll be able to make more accurate financial forecasts - for a stock or even the entire market.
Researchers have compared brain scans of those people who are making money to those high on cocaine and found that them to be almost identical. Money has a biological and psychological effect on us.
I don't think money can be understood through a lens limited to economics. And most books about money tell you the history of money, the instrument. But money is also an idea, one that we exchange to survive.
After Hurricane Katrina, I wanted to go back to New Orleans to help musicians return to the city. But Andrew Young advised me, "If you want to help people, go work at an investment bank." His contrarian advice opened my eyes to the importance of capital. "Learn how to make some money before you give it away." I learned that you can bring about good in the world especially if you have a paycheck.
The New Testament states that man cannot serve two masters. He must choose one -God, and not the other - money. For what man chooses will reveal his heart.
Money is becoming increasingly plastic and digital. If there is a major disaster, let's say an asteroid strike, we'll go back to trading meats and furs. We won't need an abstraction, a dollar bill, but real tangible goods to survive.
For the last several decades, there was a prevailing belief among traditional economists that the markets were rational and self-correcting. Alan Greenspan advocated this view. But the 2008 financial crisis showed that this view is incorrect, and Greenspan eventually admitted as much.
Social standing and reptuation has always mattered, but now it 's happening on a global basis.
