Henry Paulson Quotes

Banking, I would argue, is the most heavily regulated industry in the world. Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things.

The Commission concludes that the banking supervisors failed to adequately and proactively identify and police the weaknesses of the banks and thrifts or their poor corporate governance and risk management, often maintaining satisfactory ratings on institutions until just before their collapse. This failure was caused by many factors, including beliefs that regulation was unduly burdensome, that financial institutions were capable of self-regulation, and that regulators should not interfere with activities reported as profitable.

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.

In the U.A.E. we were the least-regulated environment in the region, and over time we are seeing more and more regulation coming in. On the other hand, a central bank can overregulate and choke the economy, and then we will have a dead banking industry.

Legislation must be passed which undoes the damage caused by excessive de-regulation. That means reinstalling the regulatory firewalls that were ripped down in 1999.

Money never seems to be interested in strengthening regulatory agencies, for example, but always in subverting them, in making them miss the danger signs in coal mines and in derivatives trading and in deep-sea oil wells.

If the large banks can do this without breaking the rules, then the rules should be revamped.

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.

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.

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.

Banks are concerned the central bank is imposing too many regulations. If the trend continues, we'll swing to heavy regulation. We need to have balanced regulation to encourage the economy.

We're one of the most highly regulated industries, and we have to pay attention to what government is doing.

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.

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.

Creating a regulatory system that reflects the modern-day realities of financial markets is not as difficult as it may appear.

This country, of course, needs fundamental reform of our financial regulatory system, as I, and many other financial institution executives, have publicly advocated for a considerable period.

When businesses affirmatively like regulations, that's when to reach for your wallet.

It's the FSA and its plethora of EU bodies that's failed.

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.

If you think that government regulators are going to outwit the market, you've got a Jurassic Park fantasy.

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.

… attempting to supervise the financial sector is a fool’s errand

Repealing rules therefore requires federal agencies to explain why the factual and scientific bases for the predicted benefits of their rules were wrong or no longer adequate to justify those rules.

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.

Rules that may be easy for Wall Street are a death sentence for startups. They are easy to break accidentally and the penalty for noncompliance is severe.