The House of Morgan Quotes

“The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the former. There’s far less competition. (Dwight Morrow)”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“The panic was blamed on many factors—tight money, Roosevelt’s Gridiron Club speech attacking the “malefactors of great wealth,” and excessive speculation in copper, mining, and railroad stocks. The immediate weakness arose from the recklessness of the trust companies. In the early 1900s, national and most state-chartered banks couldn’t take trust accounts (wills, estates, and so on) but directed customers to trusts. Traditionally, these had been synonymous with safe investment. By 1907, however, they had exploited enough legal loopholes to become highly speculative. To draw money for risky ventures, they paid exorbitant interest rates, and trust executives operated like stock market plungers. They loaned out so much against stocks and bonds that by October 1907 as much as half the bank loans in New York were backed by securities as collateral—an extremely shaky base for the system. The trusts also didn’t keep the high cash reserves of commercial banks and were vulnerable to sudden runs.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Where Pierpont had the fortitude to confront Junius, Jack silently hoped for approval and leaned on his mother for emotional support.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“anyone who asked about the cost of maintaining a yacht shouldn’t buy one.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“you can do business with anyone but you can only sail a boat with a gentleman,”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“The public be damned; I am working for my stockholders.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Under the Gentleman Banker’s Code, bankers held themselves responsible for bonds they sold and felt obligated to intervene when things went awry.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“This wedding of certain companies to certain banks—“relationship banking”—would be a cardinal feature of private banking for the next century. It came about not because bankers were strong but because companies were still weak.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“the Gentleman Banker’s Code. The House of Morgan would not only transplant this code from London to New York but would honor it until well into the twentieth century. Under this code, banks did not try to scout out business or seek new clients but waited for clients to arrive with proper introductions.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Gentleman Banker’s Code.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“the fear-ridden Chinese.” He hoped the Japanese”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Henry Adams’s judgment, “The generation between 1865 and 1895 was already mortgaged to the railways and no one knew it better than the generation itself.”3”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“It raised £154 million ($229 million) and borrowed another £140 million ($200 million). Although some jowly die-hards were petrified that shareholders might demand shorter lunches or even interfere with weekend shooting (God forbid), most accepted the grim necessity.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Since the nineteenth century, the News of the World had been controlled by the Carr family, with Sir William Carr alone holding a 30-percent share. He was oblivious to the paper’s declining performance, said one observer, “because he was invariably drunk by half-past ten every morning, a habit which had earned him the popular alias ’Pissing Billy.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Yet Rufie had already been through two world wars! In 1949, Lord Bicester relented and let his son take part in a major steel business. “Oh well, the boy’s got to learn sometime,” he sighed.40 The boy was then fifty-one and had been a partner for almost twenty years.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“He treated other partners like errand boys as they rushed in and out to get his approval. Everybody called him the Old Man. He was a sphinx who kept his own counsel and never tipped his hand. During eighteen years in the House of Lords, he never delivered a speech. Once, on a deadlocked charity board, he was asked whether he favored a proposed measure. “No,” he said, then added, “Or have I said too much?”38 To be interviewed for a job by Bicester was to endure an array of skeptical snorts, grunts, and harrumphs.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Once, on a deadlocked charity board, he was asked whether he favored a proposed measure. “No,” he said, then added, “Or have I said too much?”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“a later Morgan Guaranty president who apprenticed at Morgan Grenfell, recalled the somnolent mood: “By Thursday afternoon at four, one of the senior partners would come across to the juniors and say, ’Why are we all still here? It’s almost the weekend.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“The case was assigned to Judge Harold Medina, who would monopolize it like a stand-up comic working a nightclub audience.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“In 1939, the most vociferous opposition to U.S. entry into the war came from the German and Italian immigrants, midwestern farmers, and labor unions. The isolationist agenda didn’t change from World War I: there was the same disgust with European broils and the same suspicion that Britain would dupe the United States into saving its own empire. Complicating matters was the still fresh memory of the Great War.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Once, while visiting her adversary Winston Churchill at Blenheim, Astor said, “If I were married to you, I would put poison in your coffee.” Churchill replied, “And if I were married to you, I would drink it.”16”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“In modern parlance, the Morgan partners were sympathetic to macroeconomic management of the overall economy, even if they deplored microeconomic regulation of specific industries.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Although Britain went along with the League’s economic sanctions, it stopped short of more extreme measures, such as cutting off all supplies of oil. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin instructed his foreign secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, “Keep us out of the war, Sam. We are not ready for it.”25”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“II Duce had a megalomaniac vision of merging this territory with the colonies of Eritrea, Italian Somaliland, and Libya to forge an East African empire. Some five hundred thousand Ethiopians were sacrificed in a campaign infamous for its savage use of mustard gas.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“year later, the Fiihrer occupied the Rhineland without any military rebuke from the Allies. Yet Sir Anthony Eden, secretary of state for foreign affairs, thought the best way to keep Germany from war was to strengthen Hitler’s economy.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Bullheaded and conceited, Schacht wouldn’t hesitate to yell at Hitler and took liberties that would have cost others their heads. Once the Fiihrer gave him a painting as a gift; Schacht returned it, saying it was a forgery. Nothing fazed him, and the cocksure banker had Hitler a bit bamboozled. Albert Speer noted of Hitler, “All his life he respected but distrusted professionals such as”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“Meanwhile, German inflation worsened. The government was printing so much money that newspaper presses were commandeered. Thirty paper mills worked around the clock to satisfy the need for bank notes. Prices soared so fast that wives would meet their husbands at factory gates, collect their wages, and then rush off to shop before the next round of price increases. In January 1922, about two hundred marks equaled one dollar. By November 1923, it took over four billion marks to buy a dollar. A stamp on a letter to America cost a billion marks. At the end, in a final absurdity, prices doubled hourly.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“There’s no question he possessed a wide streak of cynicism. He once told an associate, “A man always has two reasons for the things he does—a good one and the real one.”56 A revealing comment from a man who styled himself Wall Street’s conscience.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“The failure ignited a full-blown Wall Street panic. For the first time since its formation, the New York Stock Exchange shut its doors for ten days. The corner outside the exchange became a wailing wall of ruined men.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance

“During the 1870s, Pierpont began to style himself as far more than a mere provider of money to companies: he wanted to be their lawyer, high priest, and confidant.”
― Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance