Timothy Geithner Quotes

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - two bloated and corrupt government-sponsored programs - contributed heavily to the crisis.In order to prevent another crisis, we need to do what we should have done years ago - reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We also need to repeal Dodd-Frank, the Democrats' failed solution. Under Dodd-Frank, 10 banks too big to fail have become five banks too big to fail. Thousands of community banks have gone out of business.

Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.

The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis.

I personally believe that there's going to be a good case for the government preserving some type of guarantee to make sure that people have the ability to borrow to finance a house even in a very damaging recession. I think there's going to be a good case for that.

The Libor system is structurally flawed. It is a major problem for our financial system and for the confidence in the financial system. We need to address it.

If credit unions can grow and prosper with a 15 percent cap, so can banks.

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.

From the beginning of time, we've had financial crises. People always blame the banks and for good reason. When you look for the root causes, they're almost always failed government policies.

It is impossible to understand the financial health of big financial institutions and their potential impact on the market. They don't even understand it themselves.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, although they're not officially debt of the federal government, they are off-balance-sheet debt.

I mean, everyone agrees with stress tests for banks. I mean that's clear. But banks should do that on their own. And they should worry about their own capital functioning. That's what they should do. It shouldn't be a government function.

Financial crises require governments.

Although not well known outside Wall Street, Freddie Mac and its corporate cousin, Fannie Mae, are two of the world's largest financial institutions and play a crucial role in the housing market.

If you want to change the way your banking system is regulated, if you want to learn the mistakes of what's gone wrong, then you have to change your government.

No one suggested Lehman deserved to be saved. But the argument has been made that the crisis might have been less severe if it had been saved, because Lehman's failure created remarkable uncertainty in the market as investors became confused about the role of the government and whether it was picking winners and losers.

The FHA's success provides strong evidence that government can and should play a role in the nation's mortgage finance system. It also demonstrates that although government intervention in the economy during the Great Recession was messy, things would have been a lot messier without it.

The only reason investors haven't run screaming from an obviously corrupt financial marketplace is because the government has gone to such extraordinary lengths to sell the narrative that the problems of 2008 have been fixed.

Fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in isolation, without looking at the big picture, would be short-sighted.

Too big to fail is too big.

The regulators can’t do it. These institutions are just too large and complex.

The concern that you have raised is one that I frankly share. And I'm not talking about HSBC now, because that may not be appropriate. But I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief

No private enterprises should be allowed to think of itself as too big to fail. No taxpayer bailouts should allow executives or stockholders to relax.

We are optimistic with respect to thrifts .... I don't think that there is any cause for undue concern and I would reject any suggestion that we are in the midst of some sort of a major systemic problem with respect to any element of our financial services industry.

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