Emily Thornberry Quotes

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.

Light touch regulation means that we create broad regulatory frameworks that can protect consumers to ensure an overall competitive marketplace.

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.

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.

There is a very real danger that financial regulation will become a wolf in sheep's clothing.

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

I've spent enough time in the business community to know there are certain regulators who are very constructive in their approach - those who enforce the laws and who actually want to help you comply - and there are others who have a prosecutorial attitude.

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

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

The basic architecture of Dodd-Frank makes sense. At the same time, as a number of regulators and legislators have observed, the act was a complex effort that produced thousands of pages of rules.

We're charged by Congress with regulating financial institutions. We take that mission seriously. We are tough supervisors and regulators.

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.

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.

Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things. If we could figure out that the subprime thing was a train wreck that was coming, where were the regulators?

What one has created by regulation, one could address by regulation.

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

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.

The regulations keep on coming. And we are trying to make decisions that we will be happy with for decades.

There is certainly a role for regulation, but regulation should always take into account the impact that it has on markets, a balance that must be constantly weighed.

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.

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.

However, you have to recognize that regulations will never be completely successful and they will always be full of holes. You must constantly be ready to fill new holes. Actually regulation should be kept to a minimum, but there has to be some cooperation between market participants and authorities - as was the case in the early postwar years. The Bank of England was a very successful regulator by cooperating with market participants. This cooperative spirit was broken by the market fundamentalists.

The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something.

The last 6 months make it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work.