Quote of the day - Alcoa

This was recently quoted by Citizens for Tax Justice:

I never made an investment decision based on the tax code...If you are giving money away I will take it. If you want to give me inducements for something I am going to do anyway, I will take it. But good business people do not do things because of inducements.

Who was this screaming left-winger? None other than Paul O’Neill, former Alcoa executive and U.S. Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush.

Yes, the very same Paul O'Neill as this one.

He is quite the one-man contradiction.

For the record, it's almost exactly the same as what Warren Buffett said recently:

"I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain."

To be added to our quotations page.