It's just very hard to teach a class of students about what has happened in the Global Financial Crisis, how we ended up there and how we got to where we are today, without having some basic, non-trivial understanding of the financial sector, credit, and the banking system.
I started in investment banking at Allen & Company in 1991. It was the go-go days of media mergers, and we were incredibly busy with one deal after another. Unlike typical investment banking groups, even in the midst of merger mania, we didn't have a formal face-time culture - and I felt empowered by that.
We're a small part of this ecosystem. When we go to a school and talk about investment banking, they are these monster financial conglomerates, and so we end up in the same pot. That is still an issue for us.
The billionaire founder of investment firm Elliott Management was one of several investors who warned financial ministers in 2007 that a crack in the housing market could cause huge problems for the banking industry.
The 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act will reestablish a wall between commercial and investment banking, make our financial system more stable and secure, and protect American families.
If I thought there was any hope of turning 'World War Z' into a movie, I wouldn't have written it as a giant, epic, global story, because that requires a giant, epic, global budget.
There's more honor in investment management than in investment banking.
Investment banking has, in recent years, resembled a casino, and the massive scale of gambling losses has dragged down traditional business and retail lending activities as banks try to rebuild their balance sheets. This was one aspect of modern financial liberalisation that had dire consequences.
Our entire approach to the banking and financial services business is risk-adjusted returns. We believe that in most parts of the world, and including pockets in India, banking tends to mis-price risk.
There was, of course, a global financial crisis. But our Labour predecessors left Britain exceptionally vulnerable and damaged: more personal debt than any other major economy; a dangerously inflated property bubble; and a bloated banking sector behaving as masters, not the servants of the people.
I hope that my investment into Atomico will become my best financial investment to date.
I liked the so-called Volcker Rule. I would have separated investment banking and commercial, deposit banking, as we did under the Glass-Steagal Act. I would have brought back Glass-Steagal.
The Cyprus Financial Crisis was a devastating blow to Cypriots and halted their banking system. Banks closed for two weeks to prevent a banking panic. When they reopened, capital controls were placed on the people's money, and customers were met by armed guards at the branches.
Blockchain Capital has a global investment mandate so it is very possible that we make an investment in India at some point.
So perhaps the most worrying single remark made by a responsible banking official during the current crisis came from Jochen Sanio, the head of Germany's banking regulator BaFin. He warned on Aug. 1 that his country could be facing the worst banking crisis since 1931 - a reference to the collapse of Austria's Kredit Anstalt, which provoked a wave of bank failures across Europe.
I think it is true that, post the global financial crisis initially - and for some period after that and particularly with how the mining investment boom and commodity prices played out - there was a dislocation that occurred in some of the more traditional mechanisms.