Marc Lasry Quotes

We've always been modestly leveraged, and we've never believed in a great deal of leverage on either our private equity business or on our investment banking business. And I think it really goes back to my uncle and dad growing up in the Depression and just seeing what happened to people who were overly levered.

I do believe that banks are special - they are very leveraged institutions by nature; therefore, it's even more critical to ensure that the governance and the process of running a banking company are well-organised, managed and regulated.

Equity is the cushion that protects financial institutions from unexpected changes in the value of their assets. The greater the leverage, the smaller the losses required to wipe out a company's equity, leaving it without enough money to repay the people who hold its debt.

Bailing out every bank that fails makes the system riskier, not safer.

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

The Bankers' New Clothes makes a simple, powerful argument: that banks need to raise more capital. It is entirely persuasive that the extent of their leverage makes the financial system fragile, and it clearly and patiently demolishes all the counter-arguments made by the banks and their lobbyists.

To be sure, the provision of liquidity alone can by no means solve the problems of credit risk and credit losses; but it can reduce liquidity premiums, help restore the confidence of investors, and thus promote stability.

I've lived through periods of illiquidity before. Asset prices come down. The economy slows or even goes into recession. Then the cycle re-starts. We buy at lower prices with less leverage.

I've got a huge, huge position in mortgage-backed securities. I started accumulating them in 2009, when the market was really down and things were really scary.

If nobody can sell mortgage-backed securities based on trillions of dollars of unpayable instruments, there's a lot less risk in the overall system.

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 want banks to take some risk, but intelligent risk.

Limiting the destructive risk-taking by large financial firms and banks which are 'too big to fail' is needed.

Banks operate like a man who either wears his trousers round his chest, stifling breathing, as now, or round his ankles, exposing his assets. We want their trousers tied round their middle: steady lending growth; particularly to productive British business, especially small scale enterprise.

The thing about using other people's money is they're going to set the rules.

If bankers become overly conservative in response to past lending mistakes - or if examiners force such behavior - it will hurt bankers' own long-term interests and the economy in general.

The very nature of finance is that it cannot be profitable unless it is significantly leveraged... and as long as there is debt, there can be failure and contagion.

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

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.

Suning Appliance has no problem of financial risk. Do you think I'm risky? I'm definitely not risky.

Financially, I've lost money and made money, but I know my way around financially.

A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy and do too much of it if the civilization doesn't have rules that prevent it.

The Government has to stop borrowing as much money; if we don't, quite frankly New Zealand will be downgraded and interest rates will go up for all New Zealanders.

Defaulting on the nation's debt would be cataclysmic. The U.S. Treasury's Aaa rating is the one constant in the world's financial system. When times are bad anywhere on the planet, global investors flock to Treasury bonds because they know they will get their money back.

The real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time.