John Podhoretz Quotes

We need to think deeply about whether we can sustain banks that are not only too big to fail, but potentially too big to bail.

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.

No single housing finance institution should be too big to fail.

When Obama was inaugurated, he and his team had an insight - though whether the insight was conscious or not I don't know. But it was this: The TARP $700 billion price tag was a new kind of model.

Nobody wants to have in their CV in the upper echelons of the American economic family that they nationalised major banks.

By the time Obama came into office, Washington had already agreed over a period of a few weeks to a $700 billion government infusion into the world banking system. Nothing of the sort had ever been done before, and it was done spit spot with very little national debate.

It’s not the government’s job to bail out speculators.

Too big to fail is too big.

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

We must limit the perception that some institutions are either too big or too interconnected to fail.

Most Ohioans would be surprised to know that the same Wall Street megabanks which received bailouts from taxpayers in 2009 also receive taxpayer-funded advantages today simply because of their 'too big to fail' status.

It's better to have the taxpayer pay for the losses than have the United States of America become an economic wasteland. If the financial system collapses, it's really, really hard to put it back together again.

I think the bailouts in 2008 were wrong. And I think, you look in hindsight, it was a lot of misinformation that was presented about the bailouts of the banks in the West.

In a moment of stress, funding may go to systemically-important firms, which could pull funding away from firms not making the cut.

We can no longer contemplate a world in which public or private sector funds are used to bail out or recapitalize failing firms.

When the banks grow to or when these financial institutions grow to such a size that they can't sustain themselves, or what have you, they have problems, economic problems, or financial problems, they shouldn't be able to look back to you and I, the taxpayer, to be bailed out.

It is worth noting that 'too big to fail' is not simply about size. A big institution is 'too big' when there is an expectation that government will do whatever it takes to rescue that institution from failure, thus bestowing an effective risk premium subsidy. Reforms to end 'too big to fail' must address the causes of this expectation.

Financial markets ... resent any kind of government interference but they hold a belief deep down that if conditions get really rough the authorities will step in.

The term 'too big to fail' must be excised from our vocabulary.

Overpaying the banks for their toxic assets could contribute capital, but that may not be politically feasible or attractive.

The blowback against a bailout of Lehman would have been fierce. It is often forgotten, but the prevailing wisdom the day after Lehman fell was that its collapse was a good thing.

Taking away the risk from the financial sector and taking it on to the public shoulders is not the right approach.

Governments need to be authorized to provide 'open bank assistance.' The convolutions of Dodd-Frank aimed at 'avoiding' this tactic are ludicrous and will prove to be extremely costly to the system.

If a bank's too big so that it can't fail without hurting our economy, well then, it's too big.

Historians will likely give Obama credit for steering the country away from the brink of economic collapse in 2009.