Henry Paulson Quotes

The lesson of 2008 is that ultimately our markets are driven by confidence.

I take great pride in having been able to overcome the Asian financial crisis and seeking the opportunities available to bring about an unprecedented growth in the economy.

New York never felt the recession. New York never felt a depression.

We should remember it wasn't so long ago that confidence in New York was in short supply.

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

Whenever I see a stock market explode, six to 12 months later you are in a full blown recovery.

I don't think it's the end of the world even if we have a recession. We'll pull back out of it again. No big deal.

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

America already holds the record for freak movements. Now we have a new one. It's called "Restoring Confidence." Rich men who never had a mission in life outside of watching a stock ticker are working day and night "restoring confidence." Writers are working night shifts, speakers' tables are littered up, ministers are preaching statistics, all on "restoring confidence."

As I write in 2012 we certainly do not believe that it is over yet, and the worst may be yet to come. Efforts by governments to solve the underlying problems responsible for the crisis have still not gotten very far, and the 'stress tests' that governments have used to encourage optimism about our financial institutions were of questionable thoroughness.

Wall Street got drunk and now it's got a hangover. And the question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do those fancy financial instruments?

The stress on the financial system in the fall of 2007 was significant, but not so significant as to threaten the overall stability of the U.S. economy, although it did lead to the beginning of a recession at the end of 2007.

We judged that a sudden, disorderly failure of Bear would have brought with it unpredictable but severe consequences for the functioning of the broader financial system and the broader economy, with lower equity prices, further downward pressure on home values, and less access to credit for companies and households.

It's only when the markets are perceived to have exhausted themselves on the downside that they turn. Trying to prevent them from going down just merely prolongs the agony.

I'm not panicking, and I'm not scared, I've been through the Gulf War, the Asia crisis, and the Russian crisis.

The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.

With the lessons taken from the financial crisis in 1997, the Republic of Korea has been able to surmount the global economic crisis rather successfully.

Where people are now in terms of the economic crisis, they're looking at what we think is the bottom, and I think that's when people look to film and to spirituality.

There's a loss of faith in the banking system that for so long has been the backbone of prosperity and growth.

A clear lesson of history is that a 'sine qua non' for sustained economic recovery following a financial crisis is a thoroughgoing repair of the financial system.

The experience of the '90s, whether it's the '94 peso crisis or the '97 crisis in Asia, the '98 crisis, even the 2001 crisis, is that we recovered pretty readily. There wasn't great consequence.

Our economy isn't going to recover until the housing market finds its footing.

How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?

Recession-resistant development produces things people need. Unsustainable growth churns out tinsel products that consumers have to be seduced into buying - until times get tough, when they quickly give them up.

What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don't know very much.