Paul Singer Quotes

Regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary.

Do we have to regulate derivatives? Yes, we do. 'Cause when I did this in my investments, frankly, no one knew who could pay who. But derivatives have an important place in our economy.

With the derivatives market larger than ever, we need way more regulation of Wall Street, not less.

Derivatives in and of themselves are not evil. There's nothing evil about how they're traded, how they're accounted for, and how they're financed, like any other financial instrument, if done properly.

Short-sellers perform a useful function in the market as conduits of negative information, and shorts often complain that they are discriminated against by regulators.

In the case of a meltdown, the regulatory authorities may find themselves obliged to step in to preserve the integrity of the system. It is in that light that the authorities have both a right and an obligation to supervise and regulate derivative instruments.

It appears to me that no one has learned a thing; that Wall Street is still operating as if 2008 never happened.

The Federal Reserve has always recognized the importance of allowing markets to work, and government oversight of financial firms will never be fully effective without the aid of strong market discipline.

Consumer groups fought hard to provide investor protections for 'special entities' such as pension funds, schools, and municipalities who purchase swaps. No comparable protection exists in the futures market.

Let's embrace productive capitalism, not casino capitalism, by restoring transparency and true competition in the commodities markets.

I think people have to be very careful with new ideas [in fiancé and economics]. What you need to worry about is when you have something that’s a really good idea, but you get too much of it too fast, like over-the-counter derivatives.

I don't want to talk about the regulation of financial markets because that is not my sphere of expertise. It's a very complicated topic, and if I have written a number of books they are always on topics that I think I know something about.

The good thing about a dealer's derivatives portfolio is that it is marked to market.

In an ideal world, one populated by vegetarians and Esperanto speakers, derivatives would be used for one thing only: reducing levels of risk. The list of individual traders who have lost more than a billion dollars at a time betting on derivatives is not short.

I mean there is no capital requirements to it or anything of the sort. And basically, I said there were possibly financial weapons of mass destruction, and they had them. They destroyed AIG. They certainly contributed to the destruction of Bear Sterns and Lehman. Although Lehman had other problems, too.

It is time to put in place tough, new common-sense rules of the road so that our financial market rewards drive and innovation, and punishes short-cuts and abuse.

If we are really serious about preventing another crisis like the 2008 meltdown we should simply ban complex financial instruments, unless they can be unambiguously shown to benefit society in the long run. This is what we do all the time with other products-drugs, cars, electrical products and many others.

With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.

We should probably stop trading derivatives, anything more complex than regular options ... I am an options trader, and I don't understand options. How do you want a regulator to understand them?

I am not really inclined to think there is any very effective regulation of the derivative securities markets that would be useful. People who go into it essentially ought to know what risks they're taking and I don't see any useful regulation.

A lot has been done to improve safety and soundness and confidence in financial markets and financial institutions, a lot of which was necessary.

I spent my whole career thinking about risk, markets, infrastructure, and regulation. I had seen the financial crisis unfold, and I had seen the credit derivatives market get operationally ahead of itself, which resulted in systemic risk counterparty exposures. I began to believe that distributed ledgers had the capability to tackle that problem.

I voted against H.R. 4293, the Stress Test Improvement Act of 2017, which would modify the regulatory oversight of certain financial institutions in a way that is likely to expose our economy to greater risk.

The SEC does way more good than harm - the last thing I would do is get rid of the SEC...if accounting were thoroughly fixed, a lot of other sins would go away. We're paying a huge price for deterioration of accounting.

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.