“In just about every area of society, there’s nothing more important than ethics.”
― Henry Paulson
“One of the things I enjoy the most is fishing.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“There is a very real danger that financial regulation will become a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
― Henry Paulson
“What I’ve said repeatedly is, ‘I think the auto industry is a very important industry.’”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“When you look at territorial disputes, there are good arguments on any sides. I think it’s important that we don’t take sides on legitimacy.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― 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’m a straightforward person. I like to be direct with people.”
― Henry Paulson
“When the financial system works as it should, money and capital flow to and from households and businesses to pay for home loans, school loans, and investments to create jobs.”
― Henry Paulson
“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
“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
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“Predators, they’re the best coal miners’ canary. When they’re gone, you’ve got a sick ecosystem.”
― Henry Paulson
“My dad was somewhat of a naturalist and used to teach us about different birds and trees. So did a fifth grade teacher who made a lasting impact on me; to this day, I remember his lessons about counting the needles on pine trees, seeing if they are twisted or straight, and about checking the tips of oak leaves to see if they are pointed or lobed.”
― Henry Paulson
“One of the most constant aspects of American life is change – and nowhere is it more evident than in our financial markets.”
― Henry Paulson
“Economic growth and environmental protection are not at odds. They’re opposite sides of the same coin if you’re looking at longer-term prosperity.”
― Henry Paulson
“If you’ve got a bazooka, and people know you’ve got it, you may not have to take it out.”
― Henry Paulson
“When it comes to the presidency, I will not vote for Donald Trump.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“In China, export lobbies have fought for policies that favor their interests and limit foreign competition.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“Buying a home today is a complex process, but that in no way excuses home buyers from their obligation for due diligence.”
― Henry Paulson
“I believe that the root cause of every financial crisis, the root cause, is flawed government policies.”
― Henry Paulson
“Complexity and interconnectedness matter as much as size in assessing risk in banking.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“All of us would like to have our children and their grandchildren grow up with at least the level of prosperity that we had. In the U.S., we seem to be very selfish because the older generation is not making the sacrifices.”
― Henry Paulson
“China saves too much, produces too much, sells too much to Americans and consumes too little.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“The Chinese have done some extraordinary things in terms of the investments they’ve made in alternative sources of energy.”
― Henry Paulson
“I think all governments engage in intelligence gathering vis-a-vis other governments.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.’”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“China needs a currency that reflects underlying economic fundamentals.”
― Henry Paulson
“Illiquid asset purchases are all about capital and encouraging private capital to come in.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“For decades, Indians have immigrated to the United States, joined our communities, and raised their families while maintaining their cultural heritage.”
― Henry Paulson
“Non-bank financial institutions provide credit that is essential to U.S. businesses and consumers.”
― Henry Paulson
“The U.S. and China need to take steps – mostly individually, sometimes together – that will have the mutually beneficial effect of supporting and sustaining economic growth.”
― Henry Paulson
“Too often, we restrict trade that would create U.S. jobs and is in our national interest.”
― Henry Paulson
“Every global concern – economic, environmental or security-related – can be addressed more effectively when the U.S. and China work together.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“I never once considered that it was appropriate to put taxpayer money on the line in resolving Lehman Brothers.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“Anticompetitive practices hurt Chinese private firms nearly as much as foreign ones.”
― Henry Paulson
“China and the U.S. are the two largest importers of oil. They are the two largest emitters of carbon.”
― Henry Paulson
“It is the policy of the federal government to use all resources at its disposal to make our financial system stronger.”
― Henry Paulson
“Our overriding goal in restructuring our financial architecture should be that taxpayers never again have to save a failing financial institution.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“A Fed loan to Lehman Brothers would not have prevented a bankruptcy.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“If the financial system collapses, it’s really, really hard to put it back together again.”
― Henry Paulson
“Regulation needs to catch up with innovation.”
― Henry Paulson
“When the economy is growing, there’s a lot that can be done to deal with the deficit.”
― Henry Paulson
“We’ve had crooks from the beginning of time… it’s always very interesting and troubling why good people do bad things.”
― Henry Paulson
“I’ve always said, ‘I don’t want to be irrelevant.’”
― Henry Paulson
“I’ve never been antiregulation. I’ve always believed that raw, unregulated capitalism doesn’t work.”
― Henry Paulson
“I didn’t get the charm gene.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“As a Christian Scientist, I don’t go to doctors and get diagnoses.”
― Henry Paulson
“I have relied on prayer for health care all of my life.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“I’m telling you that there is no silver bullet to keep home prices from going down or to prevent all foreclosures.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“Many of the Western democracies – including the U.S. – have a problem that voters want benefits they don’t want to pay for.”
― Henry Paulson
“As long as I can remember, I had a strong interest in fishing, and my parents, even though they had never fished or camped, took us on canoe camping trips in the wilderness of Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada, where I could fish to my heart’s content.”
― Henry Paulson
“From the time the kids were in upper grade school and middle school, we took trips over the Christmas break to nature-focused places, such as the Okefenokee Swamp and Cumberland Island in Georgia; Costa Rica; Maho Bay campground in St. John, Virgin Islands; the llanos of Venezuela; the southern coast and highlands of Belize.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“I grew up with a strong set of values – and one was never judging someone by how much money they had.”
― Henry Paulson
“I never cared about money. When I was at school, I never wanted a car. I was focused on sports, studies, camping, being outdoors.”
― Henry Paulson
“I prefer to work at the policy level, on trying to fix flawed government policies.”
― Henry Paulson
“We have institutions that have been allowed to become too big to fail because we had all kinds of flaws in our financial infrastructure, in the whole way over-the-counter derivatives work.”
― Henry Paulson
“We don’t have the necessary laws or powers to deal with failing non-bank institutions. If they’re a big bank, the depositor has deposit insurance, and the regulators can wind them down without throwing them into bankruptcy.”
― Henry Paulson
“Every American business, from the biggest companies to small hardware companies, need money to flow through the system not only to create new jobs but to sustain existing jobs.”
― Henry Paulson
“I hope to help the Indian government advance their economic reform agenda, which will benefit India’s citizens and the world.”
― Henry Paulson
“Indian-Americans are physicians, engineers, CEOs, professors, teachers, entrepreneurs. They are a vital part of the United States’ economic and social fabric. Because of this long history, the bonds among our people and our cultures will remain strong.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“In pursuing economic growth, India and the United States share similar values and similar challenges. We understand that the global economy is here to stay. To keep growing and leading the world in innovation and opportunity, the United States and India must trade freely, openly, and according to the principles of the global marketplace.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“An AIG failure would have been devastating to the financial system and to the economy.”
― Henry Paulson
“Taxpayer money should not have to be spent to save a misguided and mismanaged enterprise.”
― Henry Paulson
“Large financial institutions in this country will always play a role that is essential to our economic growth. But they must only be permitted to grow and interconnect, throughout our economy, under careful oversight and with a mechanism for allowing those connections to be broken safely.”
― Henry Paulson
“I will never apologize for changing the approach or strategy when the facts change.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“The Treasury Department has a critical role to play in helping to set the direction of a U.S. and global economy, a role that reaches back to America’s founding.”
― Henry Paulson
“As a steward of the U.S.economy and financial systems, the Treasury has helped lay the groundwork for the American economy to become a model of strength, flexibility, dynamism, resiliency. This is a system that generates growth, creates jobs and wealth, rewards initiative, and fosters innovation.”
― Henry Paulson
“America is the land of opportunity. We need to be vigilant in ensuring that each and every American has the opportunity to acquire the skills to compete and to see those skills rewarded in the marketplace.”
― Henry Paulson
“What began as a subprime lending problem has spread to other, less risky mortgages and contributed to excess home inventories that have pushed down home prices for responsible homeowners.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“We must limit the perception that some institutions are either too big or too interconnected to fail.”
― Henry Paulson
“The Fed has neither the clear statutory authority nor the mandate to anticipate and deal with risks across our entire financial system.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“The income disparity is a huge issue. And I think that the only solution to this – there is no easy solution – are fundamental changes. That the world is changing quicker than our policies are changing. And we need the kinds of policies that will let us have a competitive economy going forward.”
― Henry Paulson
“We need a new tax system. We need entitlement reform. We need immigration reform. These are not easy things. But it is going to take our political system working better.”
― Henry Paulson
“The country is polarized. And I think part of it – it is not just social media. We get our facts from different places. People self-select with so many different cable channels and so many sources. I think that is a huge problem.”
― Henry Paulson
“In all my life, I’ve been trained that when there’s a big problem, you run toward it.”
― 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
“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
“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
“Moral hazard is something I don’t take lightly.”
― 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
“Until we stem the housing correction, until the biggest part of that is behind us and we have more stability in housing prices, we’re going to continue to have turmoil in the financial markets.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“Foreclosures are a significant problem; they’re an economic problem.”
― Henry Paulson
“I’ve long believed the environmental issue is an economic issue and a political issue. The three are entwined. You can’t build prosperity on any basis other than a long-term basis, and you can’t do that if you don’t have a healthy environment.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“Every good businessman or woman carefully analyzes all the available facts before making a decision.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“I grew up on a farm – I know the smell of horse manure. It does smell better than pig manure.”
― Henry Paulson
“Sovereign wealth fund money should be welcomed. The only way not to welcome that money is when it’s politically driven.”
― Henry Paulson
“I know the automakers are important to the United States. We care about the automobile industry.”
― Henry Paulson
“I supported some very, very objectionable things in terms of bailouts or rescues, but I did it not for Wall Street, but for the American people.”
― Henry Paulson
“It’s better to have the taxpayer pay for the losses than have the United States of America become an economic wasteland. If the financial system collapses, it’s really, really hard to put it back together again.”
― Henry Paulson
“China’s growth and stability is a vital issue for all nations.”
― Henry Paulson
“As our relationship with China grows and matures, tensions will naturally emerge.”
― Henry Paulson
“Frankly I’m a bit concerned when it comes to U.S.-China relations.”
― Henry Paulson
“When I left the Treasury, there was a poll that showed – and I don’t remember the numbers exactly right – something like 90% of the people were against TARP. It prevented a disaster, but you don’t get credit for a disaster that people don’t see.”
― Henry Paulson
“I am suspicious of career engineers, people that plan it out every step of the way.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“Simply put, a Trump presidency is unthinkable.”
― Henry Paulson
“I can’t help but think what would have happened if a divisive character such as Trump were president during the 2008 financial crisis, at a time when leadership, compromise, and careful analysis were critical.”
― Henry Paulson
“I’ll be voting for Hillary Clinton, with the hope that she can bring Americans together to do the things necessary to strengthen our economy, our environment, and our place in the world.”
― Henry Paulson
“Let’s not forget, what TARP did allowed us to move overnight and put capital into hundreds of banks, and that money came back plus $32 billion.”
― Henry Paulson
“China has a more assertive, proactive foreign policy as its interests are growing around the world.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“I believe some of the tensions the U.S. has had with Russia and that the Europeans have had with Russia… China is taking advantage of some of those dealings.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“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.”
― Henry Paulson
“I’d have liked to have been another Faulkner, of course.”
― Henry Paulson
“When you’re boiling in oil, in the middle of a crisis, the challenges are so consuming there is no time for anything else.”
― Henry Paulson
“Size is the enemy of excellence in investment banking, particularly when you are trying to put together two different cultures.”
― Henry Paulson
“The cheapest and cleanest energy is the energy you don’t use.”
― Henry Paulson
“If AIG collapsed, it would have buckled our financial system and wrought economic havoc on the lives of millions of our citizens.”
― Henry Paulson
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