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.Collection: Christmas
I think all governments engage in intelligence gathering vis-a-vis other governments.Collection: Intelligence
Our overriding goal in restructuring our financial architecture should be that taxpayers never again have to save a failing financial institution.Collection: Architecture
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.Collection: Environmental
Every global concern - economic, environmental or security-related - can be addressed more effectively when the U.S. and China work together.Collection: Environmental
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.Collection: Strength
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.Collection: Finance
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.Collection: Finance
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.Collection: Environmental
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.Collection: Environmental
In just about every area of society, there's nothing more important than ethics.Collection: Society
If you've got a bazooka, and people know you've got it, you may not have to take it out.
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.
Taxpayer money should not have to be spent to save a misguided and mismanaged enterprise.
As a Christian Scientist, I don't go to doctors and get diagnoses.
An AIG failure would have been devastating to the financial system and to the economy.
Complexity and interconnectedness matter as much as size in assessing risk in banking.
I'm a straightforward person. I like to be direct with people.
There is a very real danger that financial regulation will become a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Moral hazard is something I don't take lightly.
I believe that the root cause of every financial crisis, the root cause, is flawed government policies.
I never once considered that it was appropriate to put taxpayer money on the line in resolving Lehman Brothers.
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.
Sovereign wealth fund money should be welcomed. The only way not to welcome that money is when it's politically driven.
I've always said, 'I don't want to be irrelevant.'
The Chinese have done some extraordinary things in terms of the investments they've made in alternative sources of energy.
What I've said repeatedly is, 'I think the auto industry is a very important industry.'
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.
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.'
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.
China needs a currency that reflects underlying economic fundamentals.
Illiquid asset purchases are all about capital and encouraging private capital to come in.
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.
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.
For decades, Indians have immigrated to the United States, joined our communities, and raised their families while maintaining their cultural heritage.
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.
Non-bank financial institutions provide credit that is essential to U.S. businesses and consumers.
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.
Too often, we restrict trade that would create U.S. jobs and is in our national interest.
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.
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.
China saves too much, produces too much, sells too much to Americans and consumes too little.
Anticompetitive practices hurt Chinese private firms nearly as much as foreign ones.
China and the U.S. are the two largest importers of oil. They are the two largest emitters of carbon.
It is the policy of the federal government to use all resources at its disposal to make our financial system stronger.
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.
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.
A Fed loan to Lehman Brothers would not have prevented a bankruptcy.
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.