Henry Paulson Quotes

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Henry Paulson

Profession : Public Servant

Birth : March 28, 1946

No bank should be too big or too complex to fail, but almost any bank is too big to liquidate quickly, particularly in the midst of a crisis.

Henry Paulson

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

Henry Paulson

When companies fail, shareholders bear the losses. It's just the way our system is supposed to work.

Henry Paulson

I've always said to everyone that ever worked for me, if you get too dug in on a position, the facts change, and you don't change to adapt to the facts, you will never be successful.

Henry Paulson

I don't take lightly ever putting the taxpayer on the line to support an institution.

Henry Paulson

There is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there's one thing I've learned throughout my work in finance, government, and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage.

Henry Paulson

I was secretary of the Treasury when the credit bubble burst, so I think it's fair to say that I know a little bit about risk, assessing outcomes, and problem-solving.

Henry Paulson

When I worry about risks, I worry about the biggest ones, particularly those that are difficult to predict - the ones I call small but deep holes. While odds are you will avoid them, if you do fall in one, it's a long way down and nearly impossible to claw your way out.

Henry Paulson

When you run a company, you want to hand it off in better shape than you found it. In the same way, just as we shouldn't leave our children or grandchildren with mountains of national debt and unsustainable entitlement programs, we shouldn't leave them with the economic and environmental costs of climate change.

Henry Paulson

There is big resistance from vested interests in China that don't want to open up to competition.

Henry Paulson

Xi Jinping is a very strong and ambitious leader who is looking to make a lot of changes in China. He is not looking to follow a Western model based on universal suffrage. That is for sure.

Henry Paulson

I do not believe the United States and the Americans are going to let Donald Trump become president... I think the challenge is Donald Trump, with his anti-China rhetoric and with his anti-trade rhetoric, is going to make the job for all of us more difficult going forward.

Henry Paulson

I look forward to the day when China has a truly market-determined solution... To get there, you need to have a currency that is market-determined, an open capital market, and you are going to need a competitive, open financial system.

Henry Paulson

I think it is asking a lot for regulators to be perfect - because they won't be.

Henry Paulson

If a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution.

Henry Paulson

I hate good press, and I abhor bad press.

Henry Paulson

There's a great lack of financial literacy and understanding in this nation, even among college-educated people.

Henry Paulson

The idea of being Treasury secretary in the abstract appealed to me, but my initial inclination was that it wasn't right for me to take that step.

Henry Paulson

I see nothing easy in Washington. I see either analytically simple things that are politically complex or those that are politically complex and analytically complex. I mean, look at immigration reform, you know? It is, I think, analytically easy, but politically very, very complex and very difficult.

Henry Paulson

I've got to say our banking system is a safe and a sound one. And since the days when we've had federal deposit insurance in place, we haven't had a depositor who's got less than $100,000 in an account lose a penny. So the American people can be very, very confident about their accounts in our banking system.

Henry Paulson