耶鲁大学金融市场英文文本financialmarketslecture15transcript.docVIP

Financial Markets: Lecture 15 Transcript Professor Robert Shiller: If we may begin. Today we have a very special lecture. I am very pleased to introduce Carl Icahn as our lecturer. Mr. Icahn has a career that is really relevant to some of the topics we have talked about in this course. One theme that weve talked about in this course is corporate democracy. Weve talked about a book written by Berle and Means [Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, Modern Corporation and Private Property, New York: Commerce Clearing House, 1932.] who said that shareholders are so dispersed that they have really no control over a company and boards of directors are self-perpetuating. Well Carl Icahn has made a career of really opposing that tendency in American business of self-perpetuating boards. Carl Icahn graduated from Princeton So, Carl, Im very pleased that you could come and do this today. Mr. Carl Icahn: Good to see you, Bob. Professor Robert Shiller: It would be really nice if you can give some clues to our students here, who many of them are themselves launching out on careers, of how you got started on this and what your philosophy is and what you would recommend to them. Mr. Carl Icahn: The career youre asking about--I went down to Wall Street back in--way back in the 60s and I thought I was really--I had gone to Princeton, a really good school. I had gotten in there from a tough high school; I was the first to go from my high school. Nobody believed I could do it--they never took an Ivy League--the Ivy League never took anybody from this school I went to. But anyway, I went; got in and left there and I thought I was a real smart guy. Cut it short--went down to Wall Street and worked with Jack Dreyfus and then I was playing the market in 1961. That shows how old I am. And in a bull market you make a great deal of money by doing leverage. Its a little bit like today with all the leverage that we had and now might be coming to fruition. I was borrowing money and bought