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In World War II the hostility and the exasperation resulting from the statification of the economy and the strain of the war have been directed as much against the government as against private capital.

I've been in and out of Wall Street since 1949, and I've never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall Street. And I'm not sure where it comes from, but I suspect it's got to do with a general schism in this society which is really becoming ever more destructive.

There once was this powerful, both capital and political, class who cared about supporting and affirming a solid middle class in this country.

Abstract sympathy with the working class as an economic entity is easy, but the feeling can vanish on contact with actual members of the group, who often arrive with disturbing beliefs and powerful resentments - who might not sound or look like people urban progressives want to know.

I loved working on Wall Street. I loved the meritocracy of it and the camaraderie of the trading floor.

Here's an irony of the history of conservatism's relationship with business and business's relationship with conservatism: 'Wall Street' used to be the right-wing industrialists of the forties and fifties' greatest term of derision. (Wall Street was the place that humiliated them by forcing them, hat in hand, to beg for capital).

I remember an article, I can't recall who by, it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which said that now the Wall was down, there could be no more class war. Only someone with money could ever say such a thing.

Wall Street has come a long way from the insider-dominated world that was blown apart by the Great Depression.

The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity.

While unions did not play a part in my family life when I was being brought up, my early years were most certainly spent in a working-class community.