Stephen A. Schwarzman Quotes
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.
de la Merced, Michael J. "Blackstone Chief Apologizes for Remark on Obama." The New York Times, 16 Aug. 2010.
After the Great Recession the Mexican bankers, like their American counterparts, tightened their credit standards so much that the only people who could get loans were the ones who didn’t need it. If banks do not make loans, it matters not that they are solid institutions that are well capitalized.
This quotation is particularly interesting in it shows how far partisanship and ideology can go into deluding political perception. Wallinson is a man of integrity who we must assumed believed what he said. Yet in the 30 years he referred to, most had Republican Presidents and there were a number of Republican controlled Congresses. During all that time the Republican Party platform called for continuous deregulation. Every Republican President and even Democrat William Clinton has bragged about their success at deregulating the business and financial environment in America. During that period, left wingers paraded to testify to Congress that the deregulation policies and practices was in their view injuring the country, While there was great debate over the desirability of deregulation, virtually no elected politician of the left or right denied that deregulation was happening. The Chamber of Commerce during that time always complained that the deregulation was not occurring fast enough and consumer groups claimed the rate was too fast. Yet Wallinson instead of taking the position of most conservatives that the deregulation had little or nothing to do with the Financial Crisis of 2008, actually convinced himself that there had been no deregulation. Human perception of political reality can be easily altered by ideology. Similar delusions have also occurred for left wingers. It is the ideology who is vulnerable regardless of what the ideology is.
Stephen Allen Schwarzman is an American businessman, investor and philanthropist. He is the chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm he established in 1985 with former chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers and US Secretary of Commerce Peter G. Peterson. Schwarzman briefly served as Chairman of President Donald Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum.
