What the banking system needs is creditors who monitor risk and cut their exposure when that risk is too high. Unlike regulators, creditors and counterparties know the details of a deal and have their own money on the line.
Greece's debts are all denominated in euros, but it isn't clear who holds how much of those debts. For that reason, the consequences of a national bankruptcy would be incalculable. Greece is just as systemically important as a major bank.
In 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed, we anticipated that Europe was going to have a very different bailout scheme than the U.S. because of their different political systems and different relationships between the central banks and the fiscal auth...
We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We're inheriting a situation - when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of tho...
By the time Obama came into office, Washington had already agreed over a period of a few weeks to a $700 billion government infusion into the world banking system. Nothing of the sort had ever been done before, and it was done spit spot with very lit...
We develop social systems for the handicapped, but when you're handicapped in your mind, society doesn't handle those situations well. I think we don't recognize or acknowledge the power of messages and how deeply affected we all are by the messages ...
A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.
The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificia...
The Crusaders lead to the Knights Templar; the Knights Templar lead to the Masons; and the Masons lead to the Shriners, a secret society that controls world government, toys with our banking system, and single-handedly keeps the fez industry afloat.
We did some soul-searching. Was the cable industry obsolete? Was it an opportune time to get out? Our conclusion was that if you rebuilt your system with this new fiber-optic coaxial hybrid - which we now call broadband - the glass was half full, not...
When I started the business, only banks operated at airports, only banks issued travellers' cheques, only banks issued international payments, only banks serviced their own branch networks.
People with banking experience haven't all flocked to the biggest banks; community banks and regional banks, along with smaller trading houses and credit unions, have some very talented people.
Investment banks manage to go bankrupt through their investment-banking activities, commercial banks manage to go bankrupt through their commercial-banking activities.
In fact this is precisely the logic on which the Bank of England—the first successful modern central bank—was originally founded. In 1694, a consortium of English bankers made a loan of £1,200,000 to the king. In return they received a royal mon...
George Banks: [Going to see the bank] Remember that the bank is a quiet and decorous place, and we must be on our best behavior. Michael: But I thought it was your bank. George Banks: Yes, well, I'm one of the junior officers, so in a sense it is. So...
What I think about derivatives is if every institution that owns or trades them is properly margined and marked to market, including end-users, including every institution, including sovereigns and multilateral institutions, then the system would be ...
Mr. Banks: You see, Michael, you'll be part of Railways through Africa. Mr. Dawes Sr.: Exactly. Mr. Banks: Dams across the Nile. Mr. Dawes Sr.: The ships, tell them about the ships. Mr. Banks: Fleets of ocean greyhounds. Mr. Dawes Sr.: More, tell the...
When two friends have a common bank account, one sings and the other weeps.
Mrs. Banks: Oh, George, you didn't jump into the river. How sensible of you! [Mr. Banks kisses her] Constable Jones: [into phone] It's all right, sir, he's been found! No, *alive*! Or so I presume, he's a-kissin' the Mrs. Banks. Mrs. Banks: I've been...
With post offices and postal workers already on the ground, USPS could partner with banks to make a critical difference for millions of Americans who don't have basic banking services because there are almost no banks or bank branches in their neighb...
And so it can be very much in the interest of bank A to sell-short bank B shares, or buy CDSes on bank B, because they have exposure to bank B. It's the responsible thing to do as a fiduciary, and yet if everyone does it at the same time, it's destab...
