“I’ve been through probably six crises” CF interview with Peter Weinberg, June 25, 2009.
the ability to “pivot” Caroline O’Connor and Perry Klebahn, “The Strategic Pivot: Rules for Entrepreneurs and Other Innovators,” Harvard Business Review blog network, February 28, 2011.
Flickr’s genesis was in 2002 See Jessica Livingston, Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days (Apress, 2007), pp. 257–264.
“One thing that I’ve both wrestled with” Chrystia Freeland, “The Credit Crunch According to Soros,” Financial Times, January 30, 2009.
“My conceptual framework, which basically emphasizes” CF interview with George Soros, December 16, 2008.
“It’s an almost aggressive pessimism about his own ideas” CF interview with Jonathan Soros, July 14, 2009.
“The businesses and institutions underpinning” Jennings, “Opportunities of a Lifetime.”
“The group of winners is churning at an increasing and rapid rate” “Measuring the Forces of Long-Term Change: The 2009 shift index”, Deloitte Center for the Edge, December 2009, p. 115.
“There are a lot of young entrepreneurs” Sam Grobart and Evelyn M. Rusli, “For Flip Video Camera, Four Years from Hot Start-Up to Obsolete,” New York Times, April 12, 2011.
“If you want to get a reputation” Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 2006 Annual Report, February 28, 2007.
“Almost to a man, they lay great emphasis” Merton, “The Matthew Effect,” pp. 56–63.
The power of choosing the right work is equally pronounced Graeme Wood, “Secret Fears of the Super-Rich,” The Atlantic, April 2011.
“sudden wealth syndrome” “Rich Man’s Burden,” The Economist, June 14, 2001.
“I had one friend” CF interview with Viktor Vekselberg, September 7, 2010.
U.S. political scientists in 1999 Stephen E. Lucas and Martin J. Medhurst, “American Public Address: The Top 100 Speeches of the Twentieth Century,” National Communication Association, Seattle, Washington, November 8–12, 2000.
“It was the middle” Franklin Delano Roosevelt campaign address on progressive government at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, California, September 23, 1932.
“In Russia, all the property” Chrystia Freeland, “The Next Russian Revolution,” The Atlantic, October 2011.
“to buy an apartment” Ibid.
“When I graduated” Richard Cree, “Profile: Reid Hoffman,” Director, July/August 2009.
“I was focused on my CV” CF interview with Reid Hoffman, February 17, 2012.
“After the eBay/PayPal deal” Hoffman and Casnocha, The Start-Up of You, p. 169.
“Once-great companies” Ibid., p. 18.
“You were born an entrepreneur” Ibid., p. 3.
“the mind-sets and skill sets” Ibid., p. 4.
“Over the last ten years” “The Mobile Revolution: Driving the Next Wave of Productivity and Growth,” Council on Foreign Relations meeting, March 30, 2011. http://www.cfr.org/information-and-communication/mobile-revolution-driving-next-wave-productivity-growth/p24545.
U.S. workers take an average 30 percent pay cut Till von Wachter, Jae Song, and Joyce Manchester, “Long-Term Earnings Losses due to Mass Layoffs During the 1982 Recession: An Analysis Using U.S. Administrative Data from 1974 to 2004,” Columbia University Economics Department Discussion Paper Series DP0910-07, April 2009.
“Your education isn’t fungible” CF interview with Michael Spence, April 15, 2011.
“For the last sixty or so years” Hoffman and Casnocha, The Start-Up of You, p. 5.
“Remember: If you don’t find risk, risk will find you” Hoffman, The Start-Up of You, p. 188.
“In the past, when you thought” Ibid., p. 187.
CHAPTER 5: RENT-SEEKING
“They steal and steal and steal” From Chrystia Freeland, Sale of the Century: Russia’s Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism (Crown Business, 2000), pp. 67–68.
“Eating increases the appetite” Ibid., p. 233.
risked becoming “an unequal oligarchy, or worse” Raghuram Rajan, “Is There a Threat of Oligarchy in India?” Speech to the Bombay Chamber of Commerce on its Founders Day Celebration, September 10, 2008.
“quite coup” Simon Johnson, “The Quiet Coup,” The Atlantic, May 2009.
“lower the amount of government spending” Paul Ryan, “Saving the American Idea,” Remarks to the Heritage Foundation, October 26, 2011. http://blog.heritage.org/2011/10/26/video-rep-paul-ryan-on-saving-the-american-idea/.
“Once more, I am reminding you” “Ukraine: Country’s Largest Steel Mill Sold at Auction,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 24, 2005.
“It was like a football game!” The Economist, October 27, 2005.
“hate me—they don’t understand” See Chrystia Freeland, “Tea with the FT: Yulia Tymoshenko,” Financial Times, August 16, 2008.
number of billionaires relative to the size Ruchir Sharma.,“The billionaires list,” Washington Post’s Wonkblog, June 24, 2012.
economic historians have found that Russia’s oligarchs Steven Nafziger and Peter Lindert, “Russian Inequality on the Eve of the Revolution” (working paper, March 13, 2011).
according to calculations by Branko Milanovic Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality (Basic Books, 2011), pp. 41–45.
“A person must be rich or poor” Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter V, Section 1.
the only place in Mexico Luhnow, “The Secrets of the World’s Richest Man.”
Slim was a vocal supporter of his friend’s reform effort Slim continued to advocate privatization in subsequent decades. He was the cover boy of the 2012 Forbes billionaire issue, which named him the richest man on the planet. In the accompanying story, Forbes asked Slim for his “plan to reboot the economy” of the world. Among Slim’s recommendations: “Let’s talk about Spain. It has a lot of highways and they are all free. They should charge users and sell [the highways] to the private sector.”
a study by Mexican and American political scientists Isabel Guerrero, Luis-Felipe López-Calva, and Michael Walton, “The Inequality Trap and Its Links to Low Growth in Mexico,” in No Growth Without Equity: Inequality, Interests, and Competition in Mexico, ed. Santiago Levy and Michael Walton (World Bank, 2009).
“When it came to spectrum” “All Lines Are Busy,” Outlook, November 29, 2010.
“India has been overwhelmed” CF interview with Kiran Bedi, November 11, 2011.
“Corruption is endemic” CF interview with Rajiv Lall, November 13, 2011.
“The Gini coefficient” CF interview with Arun Maira, November 13, 2011.
“The tendency is that people” CF interview with Kris Gopalakrishnan, November 12, 2011.
According to Hurun, the seventy richest members of the NPC “China’s Billionaire People’s Congress Makes U.S. Peers Look Like Paupers,” Bloomberg News, February 27, 2012.
“There are skeletons” Chris Hogg, “What Brought Down China’s Huang Guangyu?,” BBC, May 18, 2010.
China’s billionaires understand that notoriety is dangerous Russell Flannery, “China Leads the World in Billionaire Flame-Outs,” Forbes, March 9, 2012.
the party’s official policy of pursuing “harmonious growth” Liu Jie, Kong Xiaohan, and Tian Ye, “Premier Wen Targets Causes of Instability, Stresses Fair Treatment of Disadvantaged Groups,” Xinhua, February 27, 2011.
“original sins” Philip P. Pan, Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China (Simon & Schuster, 2008), p. 156.
over the past three decades, China’s average per capita income International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook database, April 2012; National Bureau of Statistics of China; Jeremy Page, Bob Davis, James T. Areddy, “China Turns Predominantly Urban,” Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2012; “Income of Urban and Rural Residents in 2011,” January 30, 2012.
“What moves this structure is not a market econo
my” Carl E. Walter and Fraser J. T. Howie, Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise (John Wiley & Sons, 2011), pp. 22–23.
Unlike their Russian comrades, China’s red oligarchs Laurie Burkitt, “Landed Ladies Top List of China’s Richest Women,” China Real-Time Report blog, Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2011.
“What would the chairman of China’s largest bank do” Walter and Howie, Red Capitalism, p. 187.
The subtle hand of the Chinese government Shu-Ching Jean Chen, “China’s Power Queen,” Forbes, January 3, 2008; “Li Xiaopeng Appointed Vice Governor of Shanxi Province,” People’s Daily Online, June 12, 2008.
Another sign of the political nature of wealth in China Audra Ang, “Chinese Tycoon Gets 18 Years in Fraud Case,” Associated Press, July 15, 2003.
“If they wanted to, China’s authorities could probably find” “Face Value: Scandal in Shanghai,” The Economist, August 14, 2003.
“If only a few people are rich, then we’ll slide into capitalism” “China’s Bo Signals Wealth Gap Breached Unrest Trigger Point,” Bloomberg News, March 9, 2012.
But at the same time, Bo was a princeling Jeremy Page, “Children of the Revolution,” Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2011.
(Guagua denies driving the Ferrari) Andrew Jacobs and Edward Wong, “Disgraced Chinese Official’s Son Tries to Defuse Sports Car Scandal,” New York Times, April 25, 2012.
Guagua was educated at Harrow Jeremy Page, Brian Spegele, and Steve Eder, “‘Jackie Kennedy of China’ at Center of Political Drama,” Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2012.
Since Bo Xilai’s fall from grace “Bo Xilai Clan Links Included Citigroup Hiring of Elder Son,” Bloomberg News, April 23, 2012.
Bo was one of China’s rising leaders Jamil Anderlini, “Bo Xilai’s Wife Arrested in Murder Probe,” Financial Times, April 10, 2012.
“The emphasis once again is shifting much more” CF interview with Stephen Roach, April 10, 2012.
“Our banks earn profit too easily” Dinny McMahon, Lingling Wei, and Andrew Galbraith, “Chinese Premier Blasts Banks,” Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2012.
“this would be devastating for both our city and nation” Charles E. Schumer and Michael R. Bloomberg, “To Save New York from London,” Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2006.
“When asked to compare New York and London” “Sustaining New York’s and the US’ Global Financial Services Leadership,” McKinsey report, January 22, 2007.
The arguments in the report are so wrong that it is easy to mock Aaron Lucchetti, “Moving the Market: Why Spitzer Is Backing Study That Endorses Less Regulation—Restrictive Climate Said to Draw Business Away from New York,” Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2007.
Two days before Bloomberg and Schumer took to the op-ed pages R. Glenn Hubbard and John L. Thornton, “Is the U.S. Losing Ground?” Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2006.
“‘Our society seems to have an increased tendency’” Remarks by Secretary Henry Paulson to the Economic Club of New York, as released by the Department of the Treasury, November 20, 2006.
A final U.S. contribution from the department of irony John A. Thain, “New York Faces Challenges to Its Market Dominance,” letter to the editor, Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2006.
“Gordon Brown patrolled the conference corridors” Howard Davies, “Balls Must Save Us from U.S. Regulatory Creep,” The Independent, January, 27, 2007.
he resigned as director of the LSE “LSE Director Sir Howard Davies Resigns over Libya Links,” BBC, March 4, 2011.
“I totally understand why Dick Fuld couldn’t do it” CF interview with John Thain, September 16, 2008.
“The perspective of government” All attributed quotes from this section originally appeared in Chrystia Freeland, “What Toronto Can Teach New York and London,” Financial Times, January 29, 2010.
“The highest earnings by occupation” Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “Transitions: Career and Family Life Cycles of the Educational Elite,” American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 2008, 98:2, 363–69.
One of the most comprehensive analyses Bakija, Cole, and Heim, “Jobs and Income Growth,” p. 55, table 7; see also the explanation on p. 24.
The numbers in the UK, where the ascendancy of finance Brian Bell and John Van Reenen, “Bankers’ Pay and Extreme Wage Inequality in the UK,” CEP Special Report, April 2010.
“From 1909 to 1933 the financial sector” Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef, “Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909–2006,” NBER Working Paper, March 2011.
“In the financial industry, the United States” CF interview with Christopher Meyer, 14644, February 21, 2012.
laws increasing regulation of the finance and real estate sectors Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra, and Thierry Tressel, “A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis,” IMF Working Paper 09/287, December 2009.
“Well, of course, I wrote” Freeland, Sale of the Century, p. 176.
Washington had occupied Wall Street Sarah Palin, “How Congress Occupied Wall Street,” Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2011.
One study of the SEC “Revolving Regulators: SEC Faces Ethics Challenges with Revolving Door,” Project on Government Oversight report, May 13, 2011.
It is easy to understand the appeal of switching Philippon and Reshef, “Wages and Human Capital,” p. 21.
CHAPTER 6: PLUTOCRATS AND THE REST OF US
“If you really wanted to examine” Richard D. Lyons, “Fears of H.E.W. Cuts Spur Protests at Inflation Parley,” New York Times, September 19, 1974.
“He was remembering now” Robert Harris, The Fear Index (Knopf, 2012).
“A stranger to human nature” Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Cambridge University Press), 2004, p. 63.
If you ever have to work at a call center Unless otherwise specified, all quotes and descriptions from this section are drawn from the author’s August 2010 visit to Zappos headquarters.
“free from boring work environments” This quote appears on the jobs section of Zappos .com.
“the palace of the millionaire” Carnegie, “Wealth.”
“the marginal return for extra dollars does drop off” Jeff Guo and Rob McQueen, “Gates Asks Students to Tackle the World’s Problems,” The Tech, April 23, 2010.
“you can drive your Rolls-Royce around” CF interview with Eric Schmidt, February 23, 2011.
“If a man is not an oligarch” Chrystia Freeland, Sale of the Century: Russia’s Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism (Crown Business, 2000), p. 320.
“treated business exclusively” “Prison Exchange: Mikhail Khodorkovsky Looks Back on His Choices,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 21, 2009.
“That this talent for organization” Carnegie, “Wealth.”
“We ended up making twenty-four times our money” Bloomberg TV interview with Steve Schwarzman, November 30, 2011.
“We live in a bubble” Brad Stone. “It’s Always Sunny in Silicon Valley,” Bloomberg Businessweek, December 26, 2011.
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