Warren Buffett Quotes

For CNBC, and for Wall Street, billion-dollar fines for violations of the law are just part of the price of doing business, along with litigation costs and 'compliance.'

The largest number of jobs likely to be created by the JOBS Act will be for lawyers needed to clean up the mess that it will create.

We have witnessed the most educated, successful, and monied professionals in the country put their companies - not to mention their own liberty - at risk by engaging in flagrant and foolhardy illegal conduct.

I am pleased to be part of Promontory's steady efforts to assist banks and other financial firms in meeting legal and regulatory obligations and challenges.

This country, of course, needs fundamental reform of our financial regulatory system, as I, and many other financial institution executives, have publicly advocated for a considerable period.

Financial regulators should be particularly attentive to the financial consequences of their actions.

A lot of ambitious code has been written into the law for those and we will have to see if it actually works, if we have another example of a big financial institution going bankrupt.

If some institution wants to sell you a billion dollars worth of mortgages, they might have to sell 100 million in the market, and then you'll buy the other 900 million on the same terms. Now, the very fact that this has been authorized or will be authorized, I hope, will firm up the market to some degree. And that's fine. But you don't want to have artificial prices being paid.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

I've been telling anyone willing to listen that banks have a tendency to sit on time bombs while convincing themselves that they are conservative and nonvolatile.

I would argue that no financial instrument counted as regulatory capital should be allowed to receive any protection from losses.

No bank, banking association or trust company … shall have as a director or other officer or employee any private banker or any director or other officer or employee of any other bank, banking association, or trust company located in the same place

Fines have to be incentives to enforce the law. We cannot allow them to become just another cost of doing business

When you are dealing with the United States Government and the Department of Justice you have to always be looking over your shoulder.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

The Commission concludes that the banking supervisors failed to adequately and proactively identify and police the weaknesses of the banks and thrifts or their poor corporate governance and risk management, often maintaining satisfactory ratings on institutions until just before their collapse. This failure was caused by many factors, including beliefs that regulation was unduly burdensome, that financial institutions were capable of self-regulation, and that regulators should not interfere with activities reported as profitable.

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

Fannie Mae may have conformed to the rules but the rules didn’t conform to reality. A major bank or financial institution could meet every single regulatory requirement yet still be at the risk of collapse.

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.

It is wrong when we, in effect, throw safe and sound financial institutions into the same category with banks and lenders that climbed too far out on a limb with no way to return.

We're going to try and prove to the market that you can do a legal coin offering. If the SEC doesn't crack down, this party will be amazing - the biggest party in town for a long time. If they do crack down, a lot of people are going to feel a lot of pain.

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

Many of the smaller banks have had to get to the point where they now have more compliance people than they have lending offices. That's crazy.

If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

Rules that may be easy for Wall Street are a death sentence for startups. They are easy to break accidentally and the penalty for noncompliance is severe.