Top 90 Henry Paulson Quotes

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

In my experience, the most effective professionals in business and government have the ability to get things done. They’re trained to work with multiple stakeholders, to understand how to identify a problem, devise solutions, to compromise and work well with others.

Foreclosure is to no one’s benefit. I’ve heard estimates that mortgage investors lose 40 to 50 percent on their investment if it goes into foreclosure.

I hate good press, and I abhor bad press.

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.

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.

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.

I didn’t get the charm gene.

Foreclosures are a significant problem; they’re an economic problem.

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.

Every good businessman or woman carefully analyzes all the available facts before making a decision.

A study by Treasury economists estimated that a country with a tax rate one percentage point lower than another country’s attracts 3 percent more capital. It’s not surprising then, that average OECD corporate tax rates have trended steadily downward.

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

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

If the only way you can do well is working more hours than someone else, you’re going to lose out because there’s always going to be someone who is going to work more.

I happen to think that global slowdown, the slowdown in investment, strengthening dollar probably provide more of a headwind than we get from the decline in oil prices.

I know the automakers are important to the United States. We care about the automobile industry.

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.

Sovereign wealth fund money should be welcomed. The only way not to welcome that money is when it’s politically driven.

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

I was secretary of the Treasury in 2008. In that role, I had the privilege to work with many talented men and women in government and the private sector who labored to pull our nation back from the brink of disaster.

I would come to New York, work, and then get out of New York. I didn’t go out to dinner with other people on the Management Committee. I didn’t socialize. I didn’t politick.

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.

An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention.

Regulation needs to catch up with innovation.

It is important that China stop its over-reliance on municipal debt to finance infrastructure. I take comfort in the fact that China’s leaders understand this.

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.

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.

As the Indian government has embraced greater economic openness, the creativity and expertise of the Indian workforce has been unleashed onto the world economic stage.

Simply put, a Trump presidency is unthinkable.

No matter how the financial system is set up, no matter what the economic system is, as long as you have people, you’re going to have financial crises; you’re going to have bubbles that manifest themselves in the financial system.

In all my life, I’ve been trained that when there’s a big problem, you run toward it.

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.

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.

When you’re boiling in oil, in the middle of a crisis, the challenges are so consuming there is no time for anything else.

The financial security of all Americans – their retirement savings, their home values, their ability to borrow for college, and opportunities for more and higher-paying jobs – depends on our ability to restore our financial institutions to sound footing.

To restore confidence in our markets and our financial institutions so they can fuel continued growth and prosperity, we must address the underlying problem. The federal government must implement a program to remove these illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy.

After I left Treasury, I think in some ways it was harder to sit there and be writing my book… listening to all the criticism.

Prime Minister Singh is to be commended for beginning the process of transforming India into a global economic power by initiating economic liberalization in the early 1990s.

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.

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

I think the Chinese are wise. After all, they know the U.S. is in a very different league than Russia. The U.S. is the major power in the world, and the US-China relationship… is very important to global stability, to sustain global economic growth.

I don’t know anyone that says, ‘Boy, I had a great career, and I’m happy because I screwed up my life outside of my career, my family life.’ There’s no one that feels that way.

Taxpayer money should not have to be spent to save a misguided and mismanaged enterprise.

I grew up on a working farm. It was small, a hundred acres, but we had cows and pigs and chickens and sheep and a vegetable garden. I spent hours pulling weeds, hoeing, feeding the horses, cleaning out the stalls. My dad was a tough taskmaster. I always worked, but we also had fun.

I have always tried to live by the philosophy that when there is a big problem that needs fixing, you should run towards it, rather than away from it.

I want to remind you of one thing, which is, when I look around the world and look at the long-term economic fundamentals we have in this country, I think they compare favorably with what I see in any major developed country in the world.

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.’

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.

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.

What I’ve said repeatedly is, ‘I think the auto industry is a very important industry.’

My focus is on the financial sector, on getting credit going, getting lending flowing. I can’t imagine anything that would have a bigger stimulative impact.

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

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

I think history shows that countries have to have some kind of a threshold level of economic success before they begin to have the means and the will to focus on the environment.

As we work to promote greater economic opportunity for the American people, we must always remember that the American economy is deeply integrated with the global economy. That brings challenges but even greater opportunities.

I have relied on prayer for health care all of my life.