Henry Paulson Quotes

The strongest bank in the United States will last only so long as the people will have sufficient confidence in it to keep their money there.

Raising minimum capital requirements [for banks] is expensive. But it is safe.

I want to say very clearly that the government... is ready to intervene in order to guarantee the stability of banks and the savings of our citizens.

There's a loss of faith in the banking system that for so long has been the backbone of prosperity and growth.

There is close to zero trust in institutions in Afghanistan. The mobile carriers have more trust than the banks.

In capital we trust. Capital is our savior, our holy grail, our fountain of youth, or at least health, for banks.

We were able in the Recovery Act to get a program where we increased our loan guarantees to 90 percent. Because we had that program, a bank wouldn't have to take that much risk.

The public has lost faith in the ability of Social Security and Medicare to provide for old age. They've lost faith in the banking system and in conventional medical insurance.

Central bankers got it right in the United States in 1987 when they avoided deflationary pressures as well as serious trouble in the banking system.

The 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act will reestablish a wall between commercial and investment banking, make our financial system more stable and secure, and protect American families.

All the merchants may break, but the Bank of the United States will not break.

By the 1890s, the leading Wall Street bankers were becoming increasingly disgruntled with their own creation, the National Banking System... while the banking system was partially centralized under their leadership, it was not centralized enough.

We have put in place policies through supervision and regulation that has greatly enhanced the safety and soundness of the banking system.

If your bank took bailout money, take your money out of that bank and put it in a credit union. Credit unions are owned by the people who have their money in the credit union.

It's extremely important for our banks to have more capital, higher quality capital.

I come from a state with many sound, responsible banks.

Haven't we all grown up trusting high street banks? Their branches were fixtures, not only in our towns and cities, but in the way our lives ran. Yet it is no exaggeration to say that thousands, possibly millions of us, instead of being helped have found our lives permanently damaged by the toxic U.K. financial system.

People are losing faith in the banking system due to security issues.

I'm not really worried about England's banks.

It's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.

The federal [bank deposit] insurance scheme has worked up to now simply and solely because there have been very few bank failures. The next time we have a pestilence of them it will come to grief quickly enough, and if the good banks escape ruin with the bad ones it will be only because the taxpayer foots the bill.

I completely agree with the concept that American citizens shouldn't expect that a failure of a bank would cost them money, or that it would hurt the economy.

The goal of the FED, as with all central banks, is three-fold: (1) to protect the largest commercial banks from their depositors, who occasionally exercise their contractual right to withdraw currency (the ungrateful cads); (2) to control entry of newcomers into the bankers' cartel (interlopers); (3) to keep the stock market from collapsing in a panic, thereby persuading depositors to withdraw currency

Then came the second Amsterdam discovery, although the principle was known elsewhere. Bank deposits...did not need to be left idly in the bank. They could be lent. The bank then got interest. The borrower then had a deposit that he could spend. But the original deposit still stood to the credit of the original depositor. That too could be spent. Money, spendable money, had been created. Let no one rub his or her eyes. It's still being done-every day. The creation of money by a bank is as simple as this, so simple, I've often said, that the mind is slightly repelled.

I believe in diversification of income, because you never know what will happen. I'm a slightly paranoid person who thinks things could be ruined at any time.