Regulators Quotes

Debt, we've learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage.

I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market.

We needed to be uncompromising [with our workforce], to expect 100 percent of our employees to comply 100 percent of the time with complex and ever-changing government mandates. Striving to comply with every law does not mean agreeing with every law. But, even when faced with laws we think are counter-productive, we must first comply. Only then, from a credible position, can we enter into a dialogue with regulatory agencies to demonstrate alternatives that are more beneficial. If these efforts fail, we can then join with others in using education and/or political efforts to change the law

It’s a battle in which the Wall Street lobbying and public-relations machine will have a decisive advantage…. With the regulators, you don’t have to win. You just have to gum them up. And that is exactly what Wall Street has done.

PayPal came within an inch of being shut down by regulators when they started. The feds seizing the Dwolla account and stealing the money that is owned by Mt. Gox customers is more proof that Bitcoin is the superior payment system.

The guiding purpose of the government regulator is to prevent rather than to create something.

You have to abide by the regulations that the regulators insist on. This is not a philosophical divide - it's a fact of life.

We are totally open kimono with regulators.

A healthy skepticism, regularly exercised…

The basic theory of bank regulation is that, left to their own devices, bankers would make banks too risky, so regulators and supervisors are there to make banks more boring. A bank is, roughly, a big pot of assets bought with depositors’ money; the bank owns essentially an option on those assets. If the assets go up, the bank gets a highly leveraged return; if the assets go down, the losses are largely the depositors’ (or the taxpayers’) problem. “Heads I win, tails you lose” … So banks have incentives to buy high-risk, high-return assets with as much leverage as possible, and risk-based capital regulation and prudential bank supervision counteract those incentives. The bankers — who own stock in their banks and get paid bonuses for making money — push for more risk and more volatility, and the bank supervisors push back.

ESG is a pernicious strategy, because it allows the left to accomplish what it could never hope to achieve at the ballot box or through competition in the free market. ESG empowers an unelected cabal of bureaucrats, regulators and activist investors to rate companies based on their adherence to left-wing values. Like the social credit scores issued by the Chinese Communist Party, a low ESG score can be devastating, making it virtually impossible for a company to raise capital—and that is exactly the point.

Wall Street banks have the right to express their views to lawmakers and regulators through lobbying, but the law is clear: If they want to influence lawmakers, they must disclose their lobbying expenditures.

We shouldn't limit the idea of 'policy recommendations' to regulators. On the Internet, all of us are, in a sense, policymakers.

I know that it would not shock you to discover that this isn’t the first time that Congress and the regulatory agencies did not act in the public interest.

It's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.

Shell companies can be owned by other shell companies; opaque offshore vehicles are carefully designed so that regulators can't identify who is using them; with the right accountants, they can be set up quickly and easily.

We cannot wait for regulators to catch up with science.

Regulators are very heavily lobbied and they tend to give in…. We must have strong, vigilant, regulators.

Regulators, who could in principle consider both economic growth and larger social needs, do not receive the necessary political mandates from short sighted voters who want low taxes and cheap prices.

We were the first bank to start a loan modification at IndyMac and had a very good record of working with the regulators.

If we want our regulators to do better, we have to embrace a simple idea: regulation isn't an obstacle to thriving free markets; it's a vital part of them.

Short-sellers perform a useful function in the market as conduits of negative information, and shorts often complain that they are discriminated against by regulators.

Priorities are set by legislators, regulators and industry interests. The consumer gets the left-overs.

Regulators around the world have achieved an unprecedented level of collaboration since the financial crisis to create global standards for financial institutions. American regulators have largely viewed these international standards as a floor, and imposed higher standards on U.S. institutions.

Regulators at the Food and Drug Administration have a tough job.