Howard Lutnick Quotes

I take a very jaundiced view of China. I think they only about themselves and seek to harm us, and so we need to protect ourselves. We need to drive our innovation, and we need to stop helping them.

So my plan is to only serve the American people. So I will divest, and I will sell all of my interests, all of my business interests, all of my assets, everything. I've worked together with the Office of Government Ethics, and we've reached agreement on how to do that. And I will be divesting within 90 days upon my confirmation. So I should have no business interest, therefore, no conflicts of interest. I've made the decision that I've made enough money in my life. I can take care of myself, I can take care of my family. It is now my chance to serve the American people.

You can argue all you want and discuss it, but when the boss says this is what we’re going to do, do you have a problem doing what the boss says they’re going to do? You always have two choices. You can quit or you can execute the plan.

Before 9/11, we wanted to do things on our own. And then after 9/11, I just wanted to be partners with everybody. I feel like working with other firms, working with other companies, working with other people just builds a stronger foundation beneath you. And I needed the breadth and scale of that foundation beneath me. So I'm much more attuned to working together with others, to being partners with others, to creating broad coalitions and that's what Cantor Fitzgerald has set out to do. It works really, really well with all sorts of other companies. And that's the key part of what's made us successful.

Well, decisions I made were they needed to have a boss for the business. If I didn't have a leader, I shut it. And I had a division of 86 people where four people survived. And you can't really build a business back with four people. Basically, we went from being a great company that was making a million dollars a day to a company that was losing a million dollars a day. But they all have mortgages to pay, and they need to put food on their table. So one of the things I did is I would call the leaders of other companies and say, here, this guy's John. He sells this many products. He's incredibly successful. You would've never been able to hire him. He was never going to come work for you.

Well, it used to be that I felt that I had two lives before 9/11 and after, and it would feel sometimes that it was still so raw it felt like yesterday. And this year as I reflect on 20 years, it just doesn't feel like yesterday anymore. I employ the children of people who were killed that day. 20 years is as much time since 9/11 as I was at Cantor Fitzgerald before 9/11. So I think it feels much more separated from my life before.

Who's Apple? It's America. We want to bring that innovation back and make sure our great companies, and let's be clear, we have them all. There's no other country as the incredible technology companies, pharma companies that we have. Let's bring those companies manufacturing and innovation and have them do that, manufacturing America with American workers. Let's try that.

So the night of September 11, I didn't really know who was alive and who wasn't alive. So we had a conference call. It was about 10 o'clock at night. And my employees called in. And I said, look, we have two choices. We can shut the firm down and go to our friends' funerals. Remember, that would be 20 funerals a day every day for 35 straight days. And I've got to tell you, I'm not really interested in going to work. All I want to do is climb under the covers and hug my family. But if we are going to go to work, we're going to do it to take care of our friends' families. So what do you want to do? You guys want to shut it down? Or do you want to work harder than you've ever worked before in your life? And that was the moment where the company survived.

We would never, ever be associated with a company that has anything to do with jihad. And it disgusts me. Tether will seize any amount of coin in illicit activity.

Well, I don't know if they were surprised or not, but if you just think for a second of what the people of Cantor Fitzgerald went through, to lose all their friends, their co-workers, all the people they worked together closely with and cared about. I mean, the emotions were very, very high. I don't think there's a single person at Cantor Fitzgerald who could say that they weren't, you know, just completely torn apart by what happened. It was the most difficult of circumstances.

I've worked at Cantor my entire career, 41 years. And rebuilding the company over the past 24 years is my greatest business achievement. After 9/11, we were down to about 1000 employees. Today, the company employs more than 14,000.

My father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He kept his diagnosis secret from me because he wanted to make sure I left to start college in the fall. He dropped me off at school, and a week later, he went for his first chemotherapy treatment at a local hospital. The nurse accidentally gave him the wrong dose, and he died right then and there. It was September 12, 1979, and I was 18 years old. So we all know losing one parent is heartbreaking, but losing both is something entirely different. It's life shattering.

I think America is in a place to teach the world and to show the world what leadership is like, what a great economy is like, what taking care of its Americans is like. And to be part of that administration, to be part of this historic Trump administration is one of the great honors of my life. So I'm just looking forward to being a part of this administration, to play my part in helping drive our economy's growth and driving the support and dedication to our American people.

I remember right after the attacks on 9/11, the initial reports were on, that was an attack on capitalism. They make it theoretical. And what I really understood that it's personal. These are human beings lives being torn up.

Our great allies have taken advantage of our good nature, and they like steel in Japan and appliances in Korea. They've just taking advantage of us it's time for them to partner with us and bring that production back home. So I think we're going to work closely with our allies to increase their manufacturing productivity at home and I think your way of thinking about it, saying let's work together to do that and bring it home, I think is really important for us and really important for our workforce.