Kenneth C. Griffin Quotes

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

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.

There is no evidence that more regulation makes things better. The most highly regulated industry in America is commercial banking, and that didn't save those institutions from making terrible decisions.

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.

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

Hedge funds, private equity and venture capital funds have played an important role in providing liquidity to our financial system and improving the efficiency of capital markets. But as their role has grown, so have the risks they pose.

Improving oversight of hedge funds and other private funds is vital to their sustainability and to our economy's stability.

We can't expect Wall Street to police itself - that's why we have a federal government.

A single agency responsible for systemic risk would be accountable in a way that no regulator was in the run-up to the 2008 crisis. With access to all necessary information to monitor the markets, this regulator would have a better chance of identifying and limiting the impact of future speculative bubbles.

Fannie Mae may have conformed to the rules but the rules didn’t conform to reality. A major bank or financial institution could meet every single regulatory requirement yet still be at the risk of collapse.

You cannot have fairness unless you have transparency…We don’t know that is going on inside those boxes … we could have a meltdown [in the entire economy].

To be sure, booms and busts will come and go. But their severity can vary dramatically based on the policies in place to prevent them. With stronger regulations, neither the housing and derivatives bubbles nor the eventual crash would have been so bad.

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.

There are some outcomes in finance we don't want, and government should regulate that.

You can't look back at the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes that started in 2008 and not have some important lessons about the critical nature of oversights in financial markets and institutions.

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

I believe strongly that we need a finance industry that is good for the economy, and I don't think anybody would argue that during the eight years leading up to the Great Recession, a lot of bets were made [and] risks taken that weren't good for the economy.

I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that regulators are going to be able to outsmart the bankers. So, the task of designing regulatory reform is trying to make more or less foolproof regulation and that's one of the advantages of the systemic category.

The best approach here, if at all possible, is to use supervisory and regulatory methods to restrain undue risk-taking and to make sure the system is resilient in case an asset-price bubble bursts in the future.

The idea that it's smart to allow Wall Street firms, with this "too big to fail" imprimatur, to become hedge funds again - it's unconscionable. You're essentially saying we're going to take some elites in our society and let them roll the bones in the marketplace, and if it works out they get rich, and if it doesn't work out the taxpayer comes in again. That seems absolutely crazy to me. That seems to be where they're headed. I mean, maybe they're not and I'm wrong. Maybe they'll do sensible things. It's hard to know! There doesn't seem to be a plan.

The Federal Reserve has a responsibility to ensure the safety and soundness of financial institutions and to contain systemic risks in financial markets.

For market discipline to constrain risk effectively, financial institutions must be allowed to fail. Under optimal financial regulatory and financial system infrastructures, such a failure would not threaten the overall system.

Regulation is necessary, particularly in a sector, like the banking sector, which exposes countries and people to a risk.

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.

In the future, financial firms of any type whose failure would pose a systemic risk must accept especially close regulatory scrutiny of their risk-taking.