Quotes in the News

"Often Wall Streeters will say to academics, ‘If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?' And in this case [the controversy over high-paid executives of bailed-out companies] the public is yelling back, ‘If you're so rich, why aren't you smart? How could you make such mistakes being paid these princely sums?'"

— Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean of ­executive programs and the Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management, "Profile: Barack Obama To Cut Pay for Bailed Out Executives," NBC News: Today, Oct. 22, 2009.

"In 1993, Congress decided it would use the tax code to ‘improve' (i.e., reduce) executive compensation in publicly traded companies. ... It did so by limiting the ability of public companies to deduct executive compensation for its top employees unless the compensation was paid out in a form that Congress found acceptable. Salary was bad. Stock options were tax favored. ... In 1992, the government thought that managers were too risk averse. Stock options were seen as the magic bullet for making managers act more aggressively in the shareholders' interests. Today, many in Congress are blaming U.S. executives for causing the financial crisis precisely by engaging in ‘excessive' risk-taking. What they fail to mention is that it was Congress's own tinkering with the tax code that led to the very compensation packages that incentivized the risk-taking."

— Jonathan Macey, the Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance and Securities Law, in his article, "Washington's Plans May Result in Even Higher Executive Pay," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 23, 2009.

"Rather than foster a government takeover of health care, an effective public option would foster the idea that targeted government intervention can be a force for good — a lesson Americans will be reminded of every time they go to the doctor. This result would be anathema to the radical conservatives who currently have a stranglehold on the GOP. To them, government is always the problem, never the solution."

— Sam Berger, student at the Law School, in his article, "The Right's Real Fear: Public Option Could Succeed," Hartford Courant, Oct. 21, 2009.

"Resilient people are like trees bending in the wind. They bounce back."

— Dr. Steven M. Southwick, professor of psychiatry, "The Secrets of Resilient People," AARP The Magazine, Oct. 12, 2009.

"[People with sleep apnea] feel tired and sleepy when they wake up in the morning. I've seen a lot of patients that had several car crashes before they were diagnosed. They were related to sleepiness at the wheel."

— Dr. Vahid Mohsenin, professor of internal medicine and director of the Center for Sleep Medicine, "Northwest's Wayward Flight: Sleeping Pilots?" Time, Oct. 23, 2009.

"I think most people think of [gender] in binary terms — that is, you're either one or the other. In reality, it's more of a continuum."

— Myron Genel, professor emeritus of pediatrics and senior research scientist in pediatrics, "Which Side Are You On?" The Washington Post, Oct. 19, 2009.

"Our ability to immunize large numbers of Americans quickly and effectively against the H1N1 virus may depend on an unlikely resource: our voting system. I do not mean our elected leaders, but our network of polling places. ... As millions of doses of H1N1 vaccine are shipped out, doctors' offices may be overwhelmed. Polling places, until now largely overlooked, could be used for providing mass inoculations."

— Douglas Shenson, associate clinical professor of epidemiology and public health, in his article, "One Person, One Dose," The New York Times, Oct. 25, 2009.

"We don't know for sure [what triggered the global financial crisis. This was like E-coli [in contaminated beef], only we didn't know where it was and we don't know where it is and we can't recall it. The banking system is struggling because no one knows where the E-coli is. The reality is: If you don't address this question, we're going to have another crisis."

— Gary B. Gorton, the Frederick Frank Class of 1954 Professor of Management and Finance, "A Fine Line: How Much Oversight Is Too Much, or Not Enough?" The New Haven Register, Oct. 25, 2009.

"[T]he Puritans developed a dark genius for balancing Christian spiritual self-absorption with Hebraic social obligation, and personal liberty of conscience and action with public authority. ... Their Hebraized Christianity cannot and should not be restored as a governing paradigm, and no true civic republican should have to be ‘religious' in any organized way. But sustaining a republic does require a faith deep enough to stand up to huge concentrations of power. The operative principle, which Puritans got half right, is that while religion is dangerous in rulers, it's vital to civil society, especially to citizen insurgencies. When faith overreaches, republics falter; if it disappears completely, they're lost."

— Jim Sleeper, lecturer in political science and ethics, politics and economics, in his article, "American Brethren: Hebrews and Puritans," World Affairs, Fall 2009.

"Every publicly traded corporation is currently given carte blanche by the IRS to deduct an unlimited amount of executive compensation from its corporate taxes. However, the IRS scrutinizes the compensation paid by privately held corporations. The IRS allows unlimited compensation deductions for publicly held corporations because, under their reasoning, executives of publicly traded corporations have little control over their compensation, since it is fixed by an ‘independent board' in an ‘arms length transaction.' However, recent literature indicates that, in at least some circumstance, this assumption is false. ... [T]he IRS should do something to end this double standard and stop the taxpayer subsidy of unreasonable compensation. The IRS must recognize that publicly traded corporations have the potential to arrive at equally unreasonable compensation arrangements as their privately held brethren, and treat them equally for tax purposes."

— Aaron Zelinsky, student at the Law School, in his article, "Excessive Compensation: Your Tax Dollars at Work," The Huffington Post, Oct. 22, 2009 .

"I think it is probably all too common for students to think about how business school can help them succeed. Although individual success is important when taking on such an investment in time, money, and effort, looking at business school through such a narrow lens seems short-sighted. ... Businesses and powerful individuals work in isolation at their peril. In the thick of it, when the work gets tough and the nights get long, you start to realize that your choice of business school should also be a good match for your commitment and dedication to more than just yourself. Business school, after all, is also about relationships and working with others."

— Linda Craib, student at the School of Management, in her article, "Road Map to Success," Business Week, Oct. 19, 2009.

"Carbon monoxide essentially suffocates the red blood cells — that's the way we learned it in school. [Scientific opinion of the idea has] gone from completely skeptical to moderately skeptical. ... Therapeutically, I think it has incredibly great potential.''

— Dr. Patty J. Lee, an associate professor of internal medicine, on the discovery that the gas reduces reduction of transplanted organs and may help control inflammation, "Poison Gas May Carry A Medical Benefit," Boston Globe, Oct. 16, 2009.

"At the end of the day, we like to talk about free markets, but the companies that make up those markets rarely behave like rational actors. Perhaps this is the best we can do — capitalism is perhaps still the worst economic system, except for all the others — but we shouldn't leap from there to the conclusion that the business world is anything to admire."

— James Kwak, student at the Law School, and Simon Johnson in their article, "Why Companies Do Stupid Things, Credit Rating Edition," The Washington Post, Oct. 20, 2009.