Lynn Good Quotes

I'm always a little cautious, there's a few amendments that are out there that I think could do some damage, so I've been more concerned about over regulating, going too far.

As presidents from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama have recognized, the real question is whether regulations, whether new or old, are justified. That requires a careful analysis of their costs and their benefits.

In my view, it is unreasonable for EPA to exclude considerations of costs in determining whether it is 'appropriate' to impose significant new regulations on electric utilities.

We have got so many regulatory laws already that in general I feel that we would be just as well off if we didn't have any more.

More than 50% of significant new regulations that impact on business in the UK now emanate from the EU.

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.

Road testing the effects of regulation on European business must become second nature to the European Union.

Is regulation per se bad? Is better regulation bad? I think better regulation is good for the business community, and I think that's something we should get together on.

When an industry has a blanket exemption and someone suggests the most modest regulation, they see it changing the universe in which they do business.

We're so used to thinking in the short term, and the minute you speak in more long-term language then you tend to get dismissed as utopian and so on. We have a real problem here in making long-term thinking respectable

I frankly think we in the financial service world believe we need appropriate kinds of regulations. No question about that. But when something like Dodd-Frank has been created, sort of in the mystery of night, it is a huge document. It's vast. It weighs about 10 pounds when I carry it around.

There's a gazillion different business license fees. And just keeping up with all the regulations - it just doesn't stop.

What a nightmare it would be if we individually had to criminalise every single abuse of every single commodity, market or financial product. There are thousands of these and new ones being invented every day. Such an approach would have disastrous implications for regulation and policy-making. Any slide towards it must be resisted.

It's impossible for us to forecast what's going to happen ten years from now and make a decision today to say what we're going to do.

In order to be in control, you have to have a definite plan for at least a reasonable period of time. So how, may I ask, can man be in control if he can't even draw up a plan for a ridiculously short period of time, say, a thousand years, and is, moreover, unable to ensure his own safety for even the next day?

Allow me to inquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?

We have parts of our system which are overwhelmed by regulation. It wasn't the absence of regulation that was the problem. It was despite the presence of regulation you got huge risks built up.

You politicians have got to look further ahead; you always got a Putter in your hands, when you ought to have a Driver.

If you think about the long term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.

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.

There's nothing magic about regulations, too much is bad, too little is bad.

Life is amazingly unpredictable; any 22-year-old who thinks they know where they will be in 10 years, much less in 30, is simply lacking imagination.

An inch of foreknowledge is worth ten miles of after-thought.

If you hesitate to map out your future, to make a big plan or to set a goal, you've just gone ahead and mapped your future anyway.

if the way ahead is not clear, time is often the best editor of one's intentions.