George Soros Quotes

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

The job of the Central Bank is to worry.

The Fed is the major U.S. firefighter. It's not the Treasury. It's not the Congress. We certainly saw that vividly in 2008.

The Congress has had an uneasy relationship with banks and bankers since Alexander Hamilton. It took the United States until 1913 to set up a central bank. The Federal Reserve earned its hard-won independence over years of effort.

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

I felt that the Fed had always been the agency that picked up the pieces when there was a financial crisis, and it was invented to do exactly that.

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

The Federal Reserve Act requires the Federal Reserve to report annually on its operations and to publish its balance sheet weekly.

I started out in public service in 1998 after the Asian financial crisis of '97.

The Federal Reserve, the Treasury, all the regulator agencies - if there's a problem of the financial mechanism in society, the only one to fix it is government. They've got a legitimate role.

Nationalization, unmentionable only yesterday, has entered common usage not least because an even scarier word - depression - is next on America's list to avoid.

I’ve always been a little nervous about the Fed. Quite frankly, I’m a little nervous about the degree of their independence.

The Federal Reserve Board is indefensible in theory and indispensable in practice.

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

The second evil arising from the practice of banking, has its origin, in the system of credit itself; and the shock which, as it is rounded on prevailing opinion, it is liable to receive from whatever shakes public confidence.

There is no legislation—I care not what it is—tariff, railroads, corporations, or of a general political character, that all equals in importance the putting of our banking and currency system on the sound basis …

It’s hard to be a fan of the free market these days when the free market has just driven the economy over the cliff.

Should we think about separating the investment banks from the commercial banks, a new Glass-Steagall? I would be really excited to see that. I think it would be great for the economy.

The Reserve Bank cannot just exist; its ability to say 'no' has to be protected.

Bailouts may have been more tolerable in the early 1990s when they were rare and their use for a failing bank was uncertain. That is no longer the case.

The RBI is interacting with the banks every day.

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.

Daniel Tarullo has more power of the U.S. banking system than anybody since Alexander Hamilton. That's not an exaggeration, by the way.

Alan Greenspan is going to go down in history as one of the worst Federal Reserve chairmen ever.

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.