Mary Schapiro Quotes

What's so seductive about the efficient markets hypothesis is that it applies nine years out of ten. A lot of the time it works. But when it stops working, you blow up.

Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind.

One of the problems with hedge funds is that they are changing so rapidly. If you have the balance sheet that closed business last night, by 11 A.M. this morning, that won't tell you very much about what they're doing.

When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.

One of the most important causes of economic crises is “running liabilities”, or short term debt that the government does not insure. The U. S. financial sector holds trillions of dollars of such debt, including uninsured bank deposits and the short-term liabilities of other financial institutions, such as overnight loans…. Amongst the potential causes of the next crisis, the massive amount of short-term debt ranks as the most probable.

In some industries, we refer to risk taking as 'research and development.' At financial institutions, we often take risk by investing in securities.

Remember that banks aren't markets. The market is amoral. The market doesn't care who you are. You're a trade to the market. The market will sell you if they think you're riskier.

You could lose hundreds or thousands one day on paper and gain it all back the next, and it has literally no effect on your immediate future, provided the money you have in the market is money you're investing for the long haul (meaning at least three to five years).

Developments in financial markets can have broad economic effects felt by many outside the markets.

There's a tendency to look at investments in isolation. Investors focus on the risk of individual securities.

The fundamental problem with banks is what it's always been: they're in the business of banking, and banking, whether plain vanilla or incredibly sophisticated, is inherently risky.

Maybe we should teach schoolchildren probability theory and investment risk management.

I've lived through periods of illiquidity before. Asset prices come down. The economy slows or even goes into recession. Then the cycle re-starts. We buy at lower prices with less leverage.

I want to see an end to sovereign risk questions over Australia.

The global financial crisis - missed by most analysts - shows that most forecasters are poor at pricing in economic/financial risks, let alone geopolitical ones.

Investment banks manage to go bankrupt through their investment-banking activities, commercial banks manage to go bankrupt through their commercial-banking activities.

Remember, gold and silver always have had value and never have gone to zero. Can you say the same for stocks and bonds?

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.

What I invest in, while not risky for me, may be too risky for most people.

Any bull market covers a multitude of sins, so there may be all sorts of problems with the current system that we won't see until the bear market comes.

Stock prices relative to company assets are no better at signaling the likelihood of future earnings growth than they were the day the Titanic sank, and risk management is a good deal worse.

If you think too-big-to-fail banks are not worthy of investment because of their impossible-to-read balance sheets, well then, don't buy them.

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.

Our economy is increasingly dependent on the success and integrity of the financial markets.

Look, I think if you've got a niche portfolio or just operating in one country, like the United States, your ability to absorb the volatility is much less.