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.

I hate good press, and I abhor bad press.

In all my life, I\'ve been trained that when there\'s a big problem, you run toward it.

There is big resistance from vested interests in China that don\'t want to open up to competition.

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- with so many different cable channels and so many sources. I think that is a huge problem.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When companies fail, shareholders bear the losses. It\'s just the way our system is supposed to work.

I will never apologize for changing the approach or strategy when the facts change.

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.

Moral hazard is something I don\'t take lightly.

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.

I hope to help the Indian government advance their economic reform agenda, which will benefit India\'s citizens and the world.

We must limit the perception that some institutions are either too big or too interconnected to fail.

I\'m telling you that there is no silver bullet to keep home prices from going down or to prevent all foreclosures.

Many of the Western democracies - including the U.S. - have a problem that voters want benefits they don\'t want to pay for.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don\'t take lightly ever putting the taxpayer on the line to support an institution.

It\'s hard to punish and save the banks at the same time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.