Jerry A. Webman Quotes

If the government is going to mandate levels and punish schools for failing, they should send that money to the school system.

The NHS should be proactively using substantial resources across government to intervene and try to deliver positive improvements in people's standards of living.

The Small Business Lending Fund was cleverly named by its authors last Congress. Since its implementation, however, it would appear a more appropriate name would be the Bailed Out Bank Refinancing Fund.

The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

Government 'help' to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

In the West, if a city faces financial difficulties, it'll go bankrupt. But in China, cities will be subsidised by the Ministry of Finance. So some small- and medium-sized cities aren't worried about going bankrupt. They figure the central government will help them out.

TARP became so politicized that having money from it was almost like a scarlet letter. There were debates over compensation, worry that the rules were going to get changed. All the banks were desperately rushing to get that money back as soon as possible - in part, so they could pay themselves bonuses without any government restrictions.

See where Congress passed a two billion dollar bill to relieve bankers' mistakes. You can always count on us helping those who have lost part of their fortune, but our whole history records nary a case where the loan was for the man who had absolutely nothing. Our theory is to help only those who can get along, even if they don't get a loan.

The TARP program was nevertheless necessary to keep banks from collapsing in a cascade of failures.

Financial markets ... resent any kind of government interference but they hold a belief deep down that if conditions get really rough the authorities will step in.

We have provided capital here with a couple of institutions recently. The Federal government did that in the '30s for the RFC and I think there could well be a proper role for government in that.

My view is that discrimination against anyone at the ballot box is wrong and should have the full enforcement of the federal government.

There are lots of levels of fear and complaint about the government getting involved in business. First and foremost, of course, is incompetence.

Most companies want free enterprise in general because that produces better goods and services and makes people's lives better, but they don't want it in their business. They want protection from competition, they want subsidies, they want the government to pick winners and losers, and they want to be picked as winners, and that's what we're opposing, and that's what drives my whole efforts in policy, and in the political arena.

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.

Net Neutrality' is Obamacare for the Internet; the Internet should not operate at the speed of government.

Mainstream economic theories popular in the last several decades have tended to downplay the government's role in markets and to increase skepticism about even that more limited role. Austerity, particularly in Europe, has added to the problem. It has not worked, even on its own terms.

The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can't do that.

The government isn't going to say, "We're going to regulate banks, but we'll leave these other companies alone." I think the regulators want to make sure that they have some form of regulation on anything systemic. We like our hand. But, you know, honestly, who owns the future?

Lincoln was a modernizer, so to speak. He believed in economic development. As a Whig before the war he favored what we would call infrastructure spending, government appropriation for canals, railroads, river and harbor improvements, and a tariff to protect industry. He believed in this market revolution that was sweeping across Northern society. He himself benefited from it in his own life.

No bank should be allowed to become so big that it can blackmail governments.

When business accepts help from the government, it can be like going to bed with a hippopotamus. It's nice and warm for the moment, but then your bedmate rolls over and crushes you.

No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.

Environmental regulation looked like it was going to be under serious attack, and they were giving all of those speeches about getting government off people's backs.

When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.