James Chanos Quotes

As with the government failures that made 9/11 possible, neglecting to prevent the crash of '08 was a sin of omission - less the result of deregulation per se than of disbelief in financial regulation as a legitimate mechanism.

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 war to rein in Wall Street excess is never over.

The thought for a long time was that banks needed to be too controlled, too regulated to be turned over to the Wild West of the Net. Then the credit meltdown hit, and we saw just how reckless these so-called safe and regulated institutions were.

It is probably the case that some regulation of financing will make crises less likely, and I would say higher capital requirements are an almost fail-safe way to make banks safer. But there are a lot of other things that may not be doing that, and so we need to be careful about sort of, like, rushing to one conclusion or another.

The only reason investors haven't run screaming from an obviously corrupt financial marketplace is because the government has gone to such extraordinary lengths to sell the narrative that the problems of 2008 have been fixed.

Short-sellers perform a useful function in the market as conduits of negative information, and shorts often complain that they are discriminated against by regulators.

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.

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief

I have been working hard trying to implement Dodd-Frank reforms. We went through a terrible crisis in 2008. Many people lost their homes.

Well, I like regulation as little as anybody else. It can be intrusive. It can be detailed. It can be bureaucratic. It can be unevenly administered. It can be unfair. But most regulations that we have for mutual funds and for banks are regulations that we earned. We did something wrong and we're paying a price for it.

I think it's been, you know, kind of like a tragic play to this point. But at this point, I think it's clear, and will be clear to the majority of the Congress. I think it's clear to the American people that there is only one countervailing force to a world where financial institutions are trying to sell instruments every day and where credit has dried up, and that's the United States Treasury.

The big-ego temper tantrums of Wall Street's titans must be a concern for everyone on Wall Street. Bad behavior and manipulation of the markets must be called out by those in the industry concerned for its future.

I have and will continue to oppose any legislation that would undermine the important consumer protections provided under Dodd-Frank.

The administration will look at Glass-Steagall and what I referred to as the 21st-century Glass-Steagall as part of regulatory reform.

The financial crisis of 2008-09 was in large part the result of the so-called 'success' of people who did not understand their fiduciary duty. This kind of 'success' is extremely harmful to all of society.

The financial crisis revealed important weaknesses in many areas of our financial system.

The too-big-to-fail reform project is massive in scope. In my view, it holds real promise. But the project will take years to complete. Success is not assured.

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

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

We must learn the lessons of the 2008 crash: no company should be able to become too big to fail.

If you ever had the misfortune of reading all 2,000 pages of Dodd-Frank, which I have done - and it almost killed me - basically, all it does is create a list of all the things it wants the Fed to fix.

The financial crisis was linked to the fact that banks had excessive leverage and too many risky assets. The solution is not to try to dictate to banks what they can do or not do, but to require them to strengthen their capital to absorb potential losses and hold less risky assets.

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

Despite its heightened duty, at times the SEC has been inattentive to economic analysis.