Financial Institutions Quotes - Page 2

• There was a time in the United States when most of our financial institutions were local. Which essentially meant that local communities were able to create their own credit, or their own money, in response to their own needs. We still depended on banks, but it was a much more democratic process.

  David Korten

  Community, United States, Needs

  "Replace the Gospel of Money: An Interview With David Korten". Interview with Dean Paton, www.yesmagazine.org. February 20, 2015.

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• Accountability for the largest financial institutions on Wall Street is the bedrock for a strong economy. Hard-working families and honest businesses cannot survive in a world where the rules don’t keep the marketplace honest.

  Elizabeth Warren

  Strong, Wall, Hard Work

  "Elizabeth Warren: Our Populist Agenda — In Her Own Words" by Roger Hickey, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 4, 2015.

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• I do not understand how it is that financial institutions could think that they could take taxpayer money and then turn around and act like it's business as usual. I don't understand how they can't see that the world has changed in a fundamental way, that it is not business as usual when you take taxpayer dollars.

  Elizabeth Warren

  Thinking, Usual, Dollars

  "Elizabeth Warren: Bank Bonuses Leave Me “Speechless”, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

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• Our overriding goal in restructuring our financial architecture should be that taxpayers never again have to save a failing financial institution.

  Henry Paulson

  Goal, Architecture, Financial

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• Apparently modern financial regulators are vastly more sophisticated than we were as financial regulators 25 years ago - because we had never figured out that the key to financial stability was leaving felons in charge of the largest financial institutions in the world.

  William K. Black

  Keys, Years, Leaving

  "Too Big to Jail?". Interview with Bill Moyers, billmoyers.com. October 3, 2014.

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• I have great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions. Our financial institutions, banks and investment banks, are strong. Our capital markets are resilient. They're efficient. They're flexible.

  Henry Paulson

  Strong, Financial, Investment

  "Commentary: White House caught napping on financial crisis" by Campbell Brown, www.cnn.com. September 24, 2008.

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• You have no ability, if you're a financial institution and you're threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate.

  Warren Buffett

  Criminals, Financial, Institutions

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• Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.

  Thomas Sowell

  Real, People, Swim

  "A Political "Solution": Part II" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. September 23, 2008.

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• Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.

  Thomas Sowell

  Home, Government, Holy Grail

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.44, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• No one pushed harder than Congressman Barney Frank to force banks and other financial institutions to reduce their mortgage lending standards, in order to meet government-set goals for more home ownership. Those lower mortgage lending standards are at the heart of the increased riskiness of the mortgage market and of the collapse of Wall Street securities based on those risky mortgages.

  Thomas Sowell

  Wall, Home, Heart

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.42, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The beauty of a financial institution is that there are a lot of ways to go to hell in a bucket. You can push credit too far, do a dumb acquisition, leverage yourself excessively - it's not just derivatives [that can bring about your downfall].

  Charlie Munger

  Dumb, Buckets, Acquisition

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• People.. were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Country, Stupid, Long

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• Concentrating wealth in the hands of the few and deregulating financial institutions and practices lead to speculative bubbles that eventually burst — and that brings the whole country down.

  Jennifer Granholm

  Country, Practice, Hands

  "Facts show Democrats are job creators" by Jennifer Granholm, www.politico.com. May 15, 2012.

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• All safe deposit boxes in banks or financial institutions have been sealed... and may only be opened in the presence of an agent of the I.R.S.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Depression, Safe, Agents

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• As I write in 2012 we certainly do not believe that it is over yet, and the worst may be yet to come. Efforts by governments to solve the underlying problems responsible for the crisis have still not gotten very far, and the 'stress tests' that governments have used to encourage optimism about our financial institutions were of questionable thoroughness.

  Robert J. Shiller

  Stress, Believe, Writing

  Robert J. Shiller (2013). “Finance and the Good Society”, p.14, Princeton University Press

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• Perhaps more to the point for TBTF (Too Big To Fail bank), if a SIFI (Systemically Important Financial Institution) does fail I have little doubt that private investors will in fact bear the losses-even if this leads to an outcome that is messier and more costly to society than we would ideally like. Dodd-Frank is very clear in saying that the Federal Reserve and other regulators cannot use their emergency authorities to bail out an individual failing institution

  Jeremy C. Stein

  Loss, Political, Doubt

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• The use of a growing array of derivatives and the related application of more-sophisticated approaches to measuring and managing risk are key factors underpinning the greater resilience of our largest financial institutions... Derivatives have permitted the unbundling of financial risks.

  Alan Greenspan

  Keys, Risk, Resilience

  Alan Greenspan's address to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Forty-first Annual Conference on Bank Structure in Chicago, Illinois, www.federalreserve.gov. May 5, 2005.

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• Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default. ... The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Should Have, Careers

  "Bailout Politics" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. September 30, 2008.

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• At a time when our country is waging two wars, approval ratings for Congress are at historic lows, unemployment is at a 70-year high and financial institutions have collapsed around us, I can't imagine anyone seriously opposing a National Day of Prayer.

  Franklin Graham

  Country, Prayer, War

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• RE: GSEs like Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae: "creditors will continue to underprice the risk-taking of these financial institutions, overfund them, and fail to provide effective market discipline Facing prices that are too low, systemically important firms will take on too much risk."

  Gary H. Stern

  Philosophy, Discipline, Political

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• Close the weak banks and impose serious capital requirements on the strong ones...You see, it may sound hard-hearted, but you cannot keep unsound financial institutions operating simply because they provide jobs.

  Paul Krugman

  Strong, Jobs, Philosophy

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• What's more, sharia finance is another tool of Islamic separatism; instead of assimilating into American society, Muslims are demanding, and receiving, parallel financial institutions that reinforce the idea that they are unique, not subject to the laws and norms to which the rest of us are subject-a privileged class. At the same time, sharia finance initiatives are giving Islamic interests increased control over Western economic life.

  Robert Spencer

  Islamic, Unique, Law

  Robert Spencer (2008). “Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs”, p.185, Regnery Publishing

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• So the misplaced assumption is that we have this whole new institutional element where these [financial] institutions are looking after their own financial interests before the financial interests of the principals, princi-pals whose interests they are really bound to observe first.

  John C. Bogle

  Pals, Elements, Firsts

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• The four most dangerous words in finance are 'this time is different.' Thanks to this masterpiece by Carmen Reinhart at the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard, no one can doubt this again. . . . The authors have put an immense amount of work into collecting the data financial institutions needed if they were to have any chance of making quantitative risk management work.

  Martin Wolf

  Data, Risk, Doubt

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• Almost no one will accept responsibility for his or her role in precipitating a crisis: not leveraged speculators, not willfully blind leaders of financial institutions, and certainly not regulators, government officials, ratings agencies or politicians.

  Seth Klarman

  Responsibility, Agency, Government

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