Warren Buffett Quotes

The idea of being Treasury secretary in the abstract appealed to me, but my initial inclination was that it wasn't right for me to take that step.

I don't think you can have a better secretary of the Treasury than Hank Paulson.

I have spoken about deficits, and I think deficits are important because they address broad economic and financial stability. We need to talk about that.

It makes a difference who the treasury secretary is.

The truth is that the United States doesn't need, and shouldn't have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one.

It's true that the Federal Reserve faces a lot of political pressure and is unpopular in many circles.

It is the policy of the federal government to use all resources at its disposal to make our financial system stronger.

Barack Obama is an economic patriot.

First of all, I don't like to speak about austerity. I'd prefer to speak of fiscal discipline. Fiscal discipline, in the end, amounts to austerity if it is not accompanied by other policies.

You care about the deficit because it allows you to do things you need to do to help people who are suffering.

For the last 4 years, our Federal Government has produced the four biggest deficits in history, and the estimated 2006 deficit of $423 billion is projected to be the largest of all.

My background in financial services and my experience as a state representative have given me the ability to identify our country's fiscal problems and find steps to remedy them.

What we collectively decide about how to bail out our economy, how to pull our economy out of a ditch and what rules we put in place to make sure this problem does not happen again, will shape our country for the next 50 years. This is it.

Now the truth is, a president really can't control the economy, although his policies do have some effect on it.

I don't know anyone else on Wall Street who ever conducted a major currency reform. Or for that matter, who established a government.

There isn’t that much that Washington can do to effect the economy.

Nations in general, even under governments of the more popular kind, usually commit the administration of their finances to single men or to boards composed of a few individuals, who digest and prepare, in the first instance, the plans of taxation, which are afterwards passed into laws by the authority of the sovereign or legislature.

The debt ceiling serves no useful purpose.

When I was the finance minister, I got on well with the RBI Governor.

I was secretary of the Treasury in 2008. In that role, I had the privilege to work with many talented men and women in government and the private sector who labored to pull our nation back from the brink of disaster.

Ways and Means is the committee that tackles the big issues that affects people's lives and their jobs in a major way.

The Treasury Department has a critical role to play in helping to set the direction of a U.S. and global economy, a role that reaches back to America's founding.

The question of how to structure our nation's financial system arose in the early years of the republic.

Central bankers tend to be conservative by nature.

A finance minister should have a basic understanding of the country, know where the shoe pinches and, hence, have some compassion in policy formulation. An ability to understand economic issues should certainly be there.