Kenneth C. Griffin Quotes

Separating out banks and investment banks right now under Glass-Steagall would have very big implications to the liquidity and the capital markets and banks being able to perform necessary lending.

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.

Since JPMorgan Chase announced its surprise $2 billion-and-growing trading loss, there have been renewed calls from economists, pundits, and politicians to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that prevented commercial banks from participating in investment banking activities.

As much as the banking system may not be terribly popular, it is an essential part of the economy.

My fantasy is to break up the big banks. I wish we would end 'too big to fail' in our banking system.

I think that I was the first MP to call for the nationalisation of Northern Rock, although that is hardly surprising because I have been calling for the nationalisation of the financial sector for 30 years or more.

The job of the Central Bank is to worry.

Most certainly it was a very wrong step to Crush the Private Bank, and set up this Publick Bank in its place

Canada did not have a financial crises just because the Canadian Government said “No” to their bankers.

Since 1840 the United States has had 12 systemic banking crises and Canada has had none …. It all has to do with politics.

We don't have a good legal justification for breaking up the banking system.

The financial sector is vital to the economy. A well-functioning financial sector promotes job creation, innovation, and inclusive economic growth.

Large financial institutions in this country will always play a role that is essential to our economic growth. But they must only be permitted to grow and interconnect, throughout our economy, under careful oversight and with a mechanism for allowing those connections to be broken safely.

We need sobriety, rationality, and civility in the discussions on the regulation of financial institutions so that the banks can return in a robust manner to their central role in funding the economy.

Bringing back something akin to Glass-Steagall would clearly help limit risk in the system. And that's a very good and worthy goal. Letting banks sell securities and insurance products and services allowed them to grow too big too fast and fueled a culture that put profit and pay over prudence.

I liked the so-called Volcker Rule. I would have separated investment banking and commercial, deposit banking, as we did under the Glass-Steagal Act. I would have brought back Glass-Steagal.

I don't support going back to Glass-Steagall as is.

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

In the wake of the 2008 recession, Congress and the Obama Administration rightly focused financial regulation on protecting the nation's financial system from itself.

The cardinal maxim is, that any aid to a present bad Bank is the surest mode of preventing the establishment of a future good Bank.

The recovery of the banks is what happens when you reduce competition, lend money to them at zero interest rates, allow them to gamble. That particular style of restoration actually inhibits the economic recovery.

On the Glass-Steagall thing, like I said, if you could demonstrate to me that it was a mistake, I'd be glad to look at the evidence. But I can't blame [the Republicans]. This wasn't something they forced me into. I really believed that given the level of oversight of banks and their ability to have more patient capital, if you made it possible for [banks] to go into the investment banking business as continental European investment banks could always do, that it might give us a more stable source of long-term investment.

I have great respect for Senator [Bernie] Sanders's commitment to try to restore Glass-Steagall. But I do not believe that that is enough. And in fact, I don't believe it really addresses a lot of the biggest issues we have.

Throughout the 19th century, when there was a laissez-faire mentality and insufficient regulation, you had one crisis after another. Each crisis brought about some reform. That is how central banking developed.

The economics profession advances by one confusing financial disaster at a time.