A Quote by David Ignatius

Make the financial industry pay for its mistakes. That's the idea behind the best of the Obama administration's reform proposals: If banks issue securities backed by mortgages, say, then require them to hold some of that paper so that they will bear some of the losses.

David Ignatius

Quote Topics

Administration Backed Banks Bear Behind Best Financial Hold Idea Industry Issue Losses Make Mistakes Obama Obama Administration Paper Pay Proposals Reform Require Say Securities Some Them Then Will

Quote Author

David Ignatius
American - Novelist
Born: May 26, 1950

The financial crisis was linked to the fact that banks had excessive leverage and too many risky assets. The solution is not to try to dictate to banks what they can do or not do, but to require them to strengthen their capital to absorb potential losses and hold less risky assets.

John Paulson

The Obama administration deserves credit for quickly ending the housing free fall. In particular, Obama empowered the Federal Housing Administration to ensure that households could find mortgages at low interest rates even during the worst phase of the financial panic.

Mark Zandi

We have to make sure that the banks pay every nickel of loan losses that they create, but we don't want to hold them responsible for withdrawals if we want the economy to recover.

Edward Conard

The financial collapse of 2008 got its start with predatory mortgages, that weren’t sold by community banks and credit unions, they were sold by fly by night mortgage brokers who had almost zero federal oversight and then the big banks looked over, saw the profit potential and they wanted it bad. So they jumped in and sold millions of these terrible mortgages while the bank regulators just looked the other way.

Elizabeth Warren

Financial regulatory reform is one of the top legislative priorities of the Obama Administration.

Valerie Jarrett

Obama seemed poised to realign American politics after his stunning 2008 victory. But the economy remains worse than even the administration's worst-case scenarios, and the long legislative battles over health care reform, financial services reform and the national debt and deficit have taken their toll. Obama no longer looks invincible.

Dee Dee Myers

I'd like to help struggling homeowners who can't pay their mortgages, I'd like to invest in our crumbling infrastructure, I'd like to reform the tax system so multimillionaires can't pretend their earnings are capital gains and pay at the rate of 15 percent. I'd like to make public higher education free, and pay for it with a small transfer tax on all financial transactions. I'd like to do much more - a new new deal for Americans. But Republicans are blocking me at every point.

Barack Obama

Be proud of your mistakes. Well, proud may not be exactly the right word, but respect them, treasure them, be kind to them, learn from them. And, more than that, and more important than that, make them. Make mistakes. Make great mistakes, make wonderful mistakes, make glorious mistakes. Better to make a hundred mistakes than to stare at a blank piece of paper too scared to do anything wrong.

Neil Gaiman

Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly [...] All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way.

Valery Giscard d'Estaing

Anyone interested in the past, present, or future of banking and financial crises should read The Bankers' New Clothes. Admati and Hellwig provide a forceful and accessible analysis of the recent financial crisis and offer proposals to prevent future financial failures. While controversial, these proposals--whether you agree or disagree with them--will force you to think through the problems and solutions.

Michael J. Boskin

When President Obama first unveiled his gun control proposals recommending a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and better background checks, there seemed to be momentum behind the effort. But then the proposals ran into a wall.

Robert Dallek

Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.

Thomas Sowell

You have a sense that [Donald] Trump will probably reimagine where the Republican Party is on that issue and some others. But then I think conservatives may win in some areas, too - tax reform. So it's just - it's an enormously exciting time in terms of the possibilities.

Margaret Hoover

Don't be afraid to put anything on paper because the best art has some element of danger to it and if you hold back then people will kind of be able to tell that you're trying to be something you're not.

Max Bemis

In September 2008, the two largest housing mortgage companies called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were government-sponsored enterprises, which hold hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages, because of the losses they took on the mortgages, they essentially became insolvent, and the government had to take them over.