James P. Gorman Quotes

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.

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.

We are optimistic with respect to thrifts .... I don't think that there is any cause for undue concern and I would reject any suggestion that we are in the midst of some sort of a major systemic problem with respect to any element of our financial services industry.

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

By any measure, CapitalSource outperformed both our direct competitors and the financial services industry in general, particularly in the context of the near collapse of the financial services industry where 19 of the 20 largest financial institutions in the country either failed or were bailed out by the government.

Large financial institutions in this country will always play a role that is essential to our economic growth. But they must only be permitted to grow and interconnect, throughout our economy, under careful oversight and with a mechanism for allowing those connections to be broken safely.

Banks should decide on dividend increases and share buybacks after receiving the results of stress tests, when they know how much capital regulators wish them to hold.

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?

We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Frank Raines.

Proprietary trading does not belong in banks with FDIC insurance.

Over time, low rates can put pressure on the business models of financial institutions.

We will follow in letter and spirit whatever the RBI rules and guidelines are - whether at the holding company level or individual company level.

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

The financial crisis revealed important weaknesses in many areas of our financial system.

You cannot have the financial system crippled because of lack of decision making and lack of quality people.

The number one priority is going to be make sure that banks lend.

I support adjustments designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of regulation without sacrificing safety and soundness or undermining macroprudential goals.

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.

I'm not really worried about England's banks.

Small lending institutions lack the capability of their larger counterparts to hire the additional manpower necessary to deal with the hundreds of additional regulations created by Dodd-Frank.

We must learn the lessons of the 2008 crash: no company should be able to become too big to fail.

If you ever had the misfortune of reading all 2,000 pages of Dodd-Frank, which I have done - and it almost killed me - basically, all it does is create a list of all the things it wants the Fed to fix.

The financial crisis was linked to the fact that banks had excessive leverage and too many risky assets. The solution is not to try to dictate to banks what they can do or not do, but to require them to strengthen their capital to absorb potential losses and hold less risky assets.

Governance is very important in NBFCs.