Henry Paulson Quotes

As Americans, we shouldn't like bailouts. Where I come from, if someone takes a risk and they're going to make the profit from that risk, they shouldn't have the taxpayer pay for the losses.

A state-based regulatory system is quite burdensome. It allows price controls to create market distortions. It can hinder development of national products and can directly impact the competitiveness of U.S. insurers.

Anticompetitive practices hurt Chinese private firms nearly as much as foreign ones.

Many of the Western democracies - including the U.S. - have a problem that voters want benefits they don't want to pay for.

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

Buying a home today is a complex process, but that in no way excuses home buyers from their obligation for due diligence.

The most pressing and significant problems in the global economy are unsustainable structural issues with regard to the E.U. - fiscal deficits and the structure of the E.U. itself.

India is a vibrant nation whose strength lies in its commitment to equal rights and to speech, religious and economic freedoms that enrich the lives of all citizens. India is not only the world's largest democracy; it is also a secular, pluralistic society committed to inclusive growth.

One of the things I enjoy the most is fishing.

A single agency responsible for systemic risk would be accountable in a way that no regulator was in the run-up to the 2008 crisis. With access to all necessary information to monitor the markets, this regulator would have a better chance of identifying and limiting the impact of future speculative bubbles.

If you've got a bazooka, and people know you've got it, you may not have to take it out.

Payment systems are critically important for overall market stability. On a typical business day, U.S. payment and settlement systems settle transactions valued at over $13 trillion.

It is the policy of the federal government to use all resources at its disposal to make our financial system stronger.

As I talk with the Chinese on currency, I encourage them to move much more quickly with opening up their capital markets to competition, because I don't believe the world is going to give them as much time as they would like.

In the past, if a homeowner with a mortgage had a problem making the payment, often he'd get together with a lender and strike a deal, because foreclosures are very expensive to the lender and obviously not good for the homeowner and the community.

For market discipline to constrain risk effectively, financial institutions must be allowed to fail. Under optimal financial regulatory and financial system infrastructures, such a failure would not threaten the overall system.

In just about every area of society, there's nothing more important than ethics.

As a child, I could beat most kids in sprints, but overall, wrestling was the most natural sport for me. In fact, I was a pretty good high school wrestler. I was unusually quick and strong.

I never once considered that it was appropriate to put taxpayer money on the line in resolving Lehman Brothers.

I've always said, 'I don't want to be irrelevant.'

When our markets work, people throughout our economy benefit - Americans seeking to buy a car or buy a home, families borrowing to pay for college, innovators borrowing on the strength of a good idea for a new product or technology, and businesses financing investments that create new jobs.

When you have a big, ugly problem, there's never going to be a neat, elegant solution that is totally painless or without a cost.

China and the U.S. are the two largest importers of oil. They are the two largest emitters of carbon.

The Chinese have done some extraordinary things in terms of the investments they've made in alternative sources of energy.

One of the most constant aspects of American life is change - and nowhere is it more evident than in our financial markets.

My preference is for the Federal Reserve to be the systemic risk regulator, because the responsibility for identifying and limiting potential problems is a natural complement to its role in monetary policy.

I'm telling you that there is no silver bullet to keep home prices from going down or to prevent all foreclosures.

As a Christian Scientist, I don't go to doctors and get diagnoses.

Every global concern - economic, environmental or security-related - can be addressed more effectively when the U.S. and China work together.

Illiquid asset purchases are all about capital and encouraging private capital to come in.

India is one of the world's largest and most peaceful states with advanced nuclear technologies and has been isolated from the rest of the world on nuclear issues.

I always told people in the private sector, 'You can be the smartest person in the world, you can have the very best ideas, but if you can't sell them and you can't get other people to work with you, you're not going to succeed.'

U.S. exports to China have more than quintupled since China entered the WTO and have grown more quickly than imports. In fact, China is America's fastest-growing export market.

In China, export lobbies have fought for policies that favor their interests and limit foreign competition.

From the beginning of time, we've had financial crises. People always blame the banks and for good reason. When you look for the root causes, they're almost always failed government policies.

Regulation needs to catch up with innovation.

Well, as you know, we're working through a difficult period in our financial markets right now as we work off some of the past excesses. But the American people can remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system.

I've never been antiregulation. I've always believed that raw, unregulated capitalism doesn't work.

Too often, we restrict trade that would create U.S. jobs and is in our national interest.

I've been through periods of stress, turbulence in the market for over the course of my career, various times, and never in any of those other periods have we had the advantage of a strong economy underpinning the markets.