Avi Rubin Quotes

Clever derivatives broke dozens of companies. It killed them. Bankrupt. We don't need these kinds of innovation in finance. It's OK to be boring in finance. What we want is innovation in widgets.

Whether or not you have good consumer protection has a big effect on safety and soundness of the banking community, especially smaller banks.

We need financial regulation that allows businesses and the banks they use to have access to the tools that help keep prices of consumer goods - like groceries and home heating oil - steady, while ensuring that the taxpayers are never again on the hook for the types of wild bets that helped crash the economy in 2008.

Crop insurance should be a policy that keeps people from going broke, to make sure they can farm next year, but not to make them rich.

As we try to make the financial system safer, we must inevitably confront the problem of moral hazard.

There was never any danger of Business 2.0 ever going under.

What I think about derivatives is if every institution that owns or trades them is properly margined and marked to market, including end-users, including every institution, including sovereigns and multilateral institutions, then the system would be safe - if people were margined the way customers of investment banks are margined.

Our nest eggs, no matter how small, are safe.

It is wrong when we, in effect, throw safe and sound financial institutions into the same category with banks and lenders that climbed too far out on a limb with no way to return.

I don't think that the financial services industry and that banking in particular are any different than any other part of the economy, any other industry outside banking.

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].

In engineering, people have a big margin of safety. But in the financial world, people don't give a damn about safety. They let it balloon and balloon and balloon. It's aided by false accounting.

The willingness to take risk is largely a function of wealth.

I support adjustments designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of regulation without sacrificing safety and soundness or undermining macroprudential goals.

For athletes, it's extremely tough to trust people with your finances. It's so easy to be victimized.

It's almost 10 years since the 2008 crisis, but we all still remember the consequences of ignoring threats to the public finances.

The overwhelming majority of new mortgages are issued with government backing in a highly concentrated securitization market. That leaves us with both potential taxpayer liability and systemic risk.

Ultimately the clothing company is a large investment on my part, and I'm taking a huge gamble. But having a focus away from the track is good for you.

Financial regulators should be particularly attentive to the financial consequences of their actions.

I always felt very insecure financially as a child. I was desperate to understand money as a child. I was desperate to be secure. Because I always felt like the rug could be pulled from under me.

Wall Street, like every industry, has good and bad players.

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.

One should never risk one's whole fortune unless supported by one's entire forces.

Stock market risk is ok, but not for Social Security.

I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth.