Michael J. Knowles Quotes

If you waive loans, it will encourage everyone to opt for more as they think they can get away with it in future.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.

It’s not the government’s job to bail out speculators.

No amount of debt restructuring, even debt forgiveness, will help the Greeks achieve real prosperity. What they need is not short-term relief but, rather, a long-term cure.

If you have a lot of short-term debt, it means that all of that money can be demanded in a very short period of time. Technically, short-term debt means money that's coming due within a year. Typically, it means money that's coming due within 30 to 90 days.

Taking away the risk from the financial sector and taking it on to the public shoulders is not the right approach.

We've always been modestly leveraged, and we've never believed in a great deal of leverage on either our private equity business or on our investment banking business. And I think it really goes back to my uncle and dad growing up in the Depression and just seeing what happened to people who were overly levered.

After everyone has had a chance to bluster, posture, and pontificate, we are left with one basic question: under any foreseeable circumstance, would it be in our national interest to default on our debt? The answer is unequivocally no.

Nobody wants to put the creditworthiness of the United States in jeopardy. Nobody wants to see the United States default. So we've got to seize this moment, and we have to seize it soon.

What Obama is saying is simple: The United States has become Too Big To Fail.

Borrowed money, even when owing to a nation by another nation, should be repaid. They hired the money, didn't they? Let them pay it.

Tell Dr. Madison that we are now willing to submit to his Philadelphia lawyer for head of the Treasury. The public patient is so very sick that we must swallow anything, however nauseous.

When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretend payment.

Waiving debts corrupts the credit culture.

If you have 'too big to fail' for cities or for states, and they believe they'll be bailed out, they'll continue to make unwise decisions.

Not raising the debt ceiling does not trigger a default, because we've got enough money to service our debts. Default is when you can't service your debt.

It's better to have the taxpayer pay for the losses than have the United States of America become an economic wasteland. If the financial system collapses, it's really, really hard to put it back together again.

I fully believe that the U.S. has the obligation to honor its debt.

We can no longer contemplate a world in which public or private sector funds are used to bail out or recapitalize failing firms.

I think some people don't truly understand the situation, and they think, you know, the debt limit, it doesn't really mean anything, and they don't understand the implications on the U.S. economy and on the global markets.

We have to deal with the nation's debt.

I think Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner shared the view that they shouldn't be in the business of bailouts, but you know, you're not in the business of bailouts until you frankly think you need to be.

How about we all stop paying our mortgages! It's a moral hazard.

You don't set up an implicit promise from the federal government that everybody is getting bailed out.

The passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - or stimulus bill, as it is often called - is a perfect example in which dire circumstances necessitate immediate action. But with such large amounts of taxpayer money at stake, a hastily developed, under-thought-out plan could have been disastrous.