Steve Bannon Quotes

I won't dispute that bankers' privileged treatment in the 2008 crash merits populist scorn. But unfortunately, without a bank bailout, there probably would have been a worldwide depression.

I'm really concerned that too-big-to-fail has become too-big-for-trial.

Too big to fail is too big.

Once again, the puppets on Capitol Hill are about to slam the Muppets on Main Street. The country still hasn't recovered from the Wall Street-induced financial cataclysm of 2008, yet Congress is preparing to enact the Orwellian 'JOBS Act' - a bill that should in fact be called the 'Return Fraud to Wall Street in One Easy Step Act.'

The single most remarkable (and revealing) fact of the Obama presidency may very well be the lack of a single prosecution of Wall Street executives for the massive fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis.

What the American people don't understand is how Merrill Lynch or AIG or Lehman Brothers can reward people, and the entity fails. Not only do the shareholders lose, but the entities lose.

Don't reward bad behavior. It is one of the first rules of parenting. During the financial cataclysm of 2008, we said it differently. When we bailed out banks that had created their own misfortune, we called it a 'moral hazard,' because the bailout absolved the bank's bad acts and created an incentive for it to make the same bad loans again.

You can't have some institutions that are protected by the law, not allowed to fail, and not held to account, and all the other companies in America are allowed to fail. You can't have equal justice under law and too big to fail.

The financial crisis of 2008-09 was in large part the result of the so-called 'success' of people who did not understand their fiduciary duty. This kind of 'success' is extremely harmful to all of society.

Taxpayers have put more than $24 trillion on the line to resuscitate Wall Street after the economic meltdown of last year. With the help of this massive taxpayer support, the nation's largest banks are posting record profits.

Public anger over bank bailouts was as much about fairness as the billions of dollars spent.

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.

Tea Party people know that I stood against the Wall Street scam from Day One, that I voted against TARP, that I voted against repealing Glass-Steagall Act that kept these guys under some control.

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.

Deregulation created this epidemic of greed which according to the rules of capitalism was OK. Beyond that there was criminal behaviour. There have been no repercussions and it's hard to make your peace with.

As long as perverse compensation systems for financial executives exist, the United States financial problems will remain nearly, if not completely, intractable.

We will continue to hold accountable financial institutions that, in the pursuit of their own financial interests, misuse public funds and cause harm to hard working Americans.

I think the bailouts in 2008 were wrong.

Don't act like a bank unless you are a bank. That was a really big lesson learned from 2008.

Where human lives are concerned, time is always short, yet the world has witnessed the vast resources that governments can draw upon to rescue financial institutions deemed 'too big to fail.'

The idea that the largest banks in the world would simultaneously fail, need government support, government guarantees, and/or government intervention to survive was not in my range of realistic scenarios.

It's hard to punish and save the banks at the same time.

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.

If the government has any courage, it will punish those at the top of failed banks. Accountability is critical in every area of human endeavour - there has to be a penalty for failure; otherwise, it's only a matter of time before the economic pain our banks have caused to so many innocent businesses and homeowners is forgotten.