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Home > Financial Quotes > Banking

Financial Quotes

Banking Quotes

  • "A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it."
    Bob Hope (1903–2003), US comedian and motion picture actor
    Source: Quoted in “The Tyranny of Forms,” Life in the Crystal Palace (Alan Harrington, 1959)
  • "I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I shall never dare to take it out again. When you go to confession and entrust your sins to the safe-keeping of the priest, do you ever come back for them?"
    Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007), French philosopher
    Source: America (1989)
  • "Except for the con men borrowing money they shouldn’t get and the widows who have to visit with the handsome young men in the trust department, no sane person ever enjoyed visiting a bank."
    Martin Mayer (1928–), US author and journalist
    Source: The Money Bazaars (1984)
  • "Our banking system grew by accident; and whenever something happens by accident, it becomes a religion."
    Walter Wriston (1919–2005), US banker
    Source: BusinessWeek (January 20, 1975)
  • "The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled."
    J. K. Galbraith (1908–2006), US economist and diplomat
    Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975)
  • "Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone."
    Walter Bagehot (1826–1877), British economist and journalist
    Source: Lombard Street (1873)
  • "Adventure is the life of commerce but caution, I had almost said timidity, is the life of banking."
    Walter Bagehot (1826–1877), British economist and journalist
    Source: Lombard Street (1873)
  • "Bankers regard research as most dangerous and a thing that makes banking hazardous due to the rapid changes it brings about in industry."
    Charles Franklin Kettering (1876–1958), US businessman and engineer
    Source: Address (1927)
  • "What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?"
    Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), German playwright and poet
    Source: The Threepenny Opera (1928)
  • "I doubt if there is any occupation which is more consistently and unfairly demeaned, degraded, denounced, and deplored than banking."
    William Proxmire (1915–2005), US politician
    Source: Quoted in Fortune (October 31, 1983)
  • "You know what the difference is between a dead skunk and a dead banker on the road? There's skid marks by the skunk."
    Anonymous
    Source: Quoted in Final Harvest: An American Tragedy (Andrew H. Malcolm, 1986)
  • "It's one of life's ironies that the more you can prove that you don’t need a loan, the better your chances usually are of getting one. This is especially true for start-up businesses."
    Lillian Vernon (1927–), US entrepreneur and CEO of Lillian Vernon Corporation
    Speech.
    Source: “The Entrepreneur and the Professional Manager: Getting the Best of Both Worlds” (1998)
  • "It has been the bankers' destiny … to find themselves on the dangerous edge of the world, pointing up the contradictions and cross-purposes. They are not often loved for it."
    Anthony Sampson (1926–2004), British author and journalist
    Source: The Moneylenders: Bankers in a Dangerous World (1981), ch. 22
  • "When I was young, people called me a gambler. As the scale of my operations increased I became known as a speculator. Now I am called a banker. But I have been doing the same thing all the time."
    Sir Ernest Cassel (1852–1921), British private banker to King Edward VII
    Source: Quoted in Fat Cats: The Strange Cult of the CEO (Gideon Haigh, 2005)
  • "It is no accident that banks resemble temples, preferably Greek, and that the supplicants who come to perform the rites of deposit and withdrawal instinctively lower their voices into the registers of awe. Even the most junior tellers acquire within weeks of their employment the officiousness of hierophants tending an eternal flame."
    Lewis H. Lapham (1935–), US writer and editor
    Source: Money and Class in America (1988)
  • "I expect there will be some failures … I don’t anticipate any serious problems of that sort among the large internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system."
    Ben Bernanke (1953–), US Chairman of the US Federal Reserve
    Source: Testifying to the Senate Banking Committee (February 28, 2008)
  • "I'm very happy to support it. And I keep my fingers crossed for the future."
    Roel C. Campos (1949–), US member of the Securities and Exchange Commission
    On the Commission's fateful decision to exempt the big investment banks from capital requirements rules.
    Source: Meeting of the Securities and Exchange Commission (April 28, 2004)
  • "They took 50 sheriffs off the beat at a time when lending was becoming the Wild West."
    Roy Cooper (1957–), US Attorney General of North Carolina
    On the decision to block state governments from using consumer protection laws to control predatory subprime lending.
    Source: Quoted in the New York Times (December 20, 2008)
  • "We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms at the moment."
    Christopher Cox (1952–), US former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission
    Source: On the big investment banks (March 11, 2008)
  • "You have to eventually nationalize US banks, you have to take the problem by the horns. In my view actually most of the US banking system is insolvent."
    Nouriel Roubini (1959–), US financial analyst
    Source: Interviewed on Bloomberg Television (January 29, 2009)
  • "Less of a negotiation, more of a drive-by shooting."
    Sir Fred Goodwin (1958–), British former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland
    On the UK government's forced recapitalization of the banking system.
    Source: Quoted in the Evening Standard (London) (October 15, 2008)
  • "This is not nationalization."
    Geir Haarde (1951–), Icelandic former prime minister
    On nationalizing the country's leading banks.
    Source: Quoted in the London Review of Books (November 20, 2008)
  • "We are used to a less dynamic environment than we have seen in the past few months and days."
    Rod Kent (1947?–), British former chairman of Bradford & Bingley Building Society
    Explaining Bradford & Bingley's financial troubles. The bank was rescued by the UK government in September.
    Source: Quoted in the Independent (London) (June 3, 2008)
  • "If you were alive, they would give you a loan. Actually, I think if you were dead, they would still give you a loan."
    Steven M. Knoebel, US founder of a real-estate appraisal company
    Source: On lax lending at the Washington Mutual Bank, which went into receivership in September 2008 (December 29, 2008)
  • "I have great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions. Our financial institutions, banks and investment banks, are strong. Our capital markets are resilient. They're efficient. They're flexible."
    Henry Paulson (1946–), US Treasury Secretary
    Source: Remark (March 16, 2008)
  • "It's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation."
    Henry Paulson (1946–), US Treasury Secretary
    On the failure of the Indymac bank.
    Source: CBS News broadcast (July 20, 2008)
  • "We're not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we're going to see a whopper."
    Kenneth Rogoff (1953–), US economist
    Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy two weeks later.
    Source: Remark (August 2008)
  • "You can’t overestimate what happens when you encourage regulators to believe that the goal of regulation is not to regulate."
    Joseph Stiglitz (1943–), US economist
    Source: Quoted in the International Herald Tribune (September 20, 2008)
  • "Financial institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks—when one fails, they all fall … We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur … I shiver at the thought."
    Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960–), Lebanese-born US academic and writer, former derivatives trader
    Source: The Black Swan (2006)
  • "If banks feel they must keep on dancing while the music is playing and that at the end of the party the central bank will make sure everyone gets home safely, then over time, the parties will become wilder and wilder. When the party ends, some innocent bystanders may lose their homes altogether."
    Mervyn King (1948–), British governor of the Bank of England
    Source: Speech to the British Bankers' Association (June 2008)
  • "Not since the First World War has our banking system been so close to collapse. The past few weeks have been somewhat too exciting… So let me extend an invitation to the banking industry to join me in promoting the idea that a little more boredom would be no bad thing. The long march to boredom and stability starts tonight."
    Mervyn King (1948–), British governor of the Bank of England
    Source: Speech (October 2008)
  • "You can blame it on me and close the book, but it doesn’t come close to explaining what happened."
    Sir Fred Goodwin (1958–), British former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland
    On the failure of RBS.
    Source: Speaking before the Treasury Select Committee (February 10, 2009)
  • "Sir Fred has become the epitome of the bankers who collectively occupy a place in public opinion significantly lower than cannibalistic paedophile global-warming deniers."
    Boris Johnson (1964–), British mayor of London
    On Sir Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of RBS.
    Source: Daily Telegraph (London) (March 3, 2009)
  • "Please do not call it a bonus. It is not a bonus. It is an award."
    James P. Gorman, US co-president of Morgan Stanley
    Instructing colleagues on how to discuss their "retention awards," given after the company was bailed out with $60 million of public money.
    Source: Quoted in Huffington Post blog (February 11, 2009)
  • "This is like people who hold up banks getting paid to stop holding up banks. It isn’t good policy."
    Peter Morici, US economist
    On the large "retention awards" given to executives of failed financial services companies.
    Source: Quoted in Huffington Post blog (February 11, 2009)
  • "The problem with the bank managers was not that they were malevolent but that they were mediocre."
    Christopher Caldwell, US journalist
    On the banking crisis of 2008.
    Source: Financial Times (London) (February 13, 2009)
  • "Then they should all be sent down the job centre. At first they'll complain, "There's nothing for me in there. I trained for two whole hours to get my qualifications as a parasite and there's no parasite jobs going at the moment anywhere.""
    Mark Steel (1950–), British comedian and author
    On bankers losing their jobs in the 2008 financial crisis.
    Source: Independent (London) (September 17, 2008)
  • "His obsession with bankers has become that of an infatuated teenager. He loves them and loathes them. They taunt and tease him, and he pouts and begs and cries and loses his temper. His body craves them, but each day finds him furiously beating their chests with his fists. They have their way with him and walk away."
    Sir Simon Jenkins (1943–), British journalist
    On Gordon Brown's attempts to influence the lending policy of the major banks in the wake of the credit crunch.
    Source: Guardian (London) (January 21, 2009)
  • "If I were a banker with RBS or Barclays or Lloyds, I would do exactly what they have done. Having made rotten business decisions in the past and now been offered limitless riches to cover them, I would take the money and say thank you."
    Sir Simon Jenkins (1943–), British journalist
    On the British government's attempts to influence the lending policy of the major banks in the wake of the credit crunch.
    Source: Guardian (London) (January 21, 2009)
  • "The business of banking ought to be simple. If it is hard it is wrong. The only securities which a banker, using money that he may be asked at short notice to repay, ought to touch, are those which are easily saleable and easily intelligible."
    Walter Bagehot (1826–1877), British economist and journalist
    Source: Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (1873)
  • "Socialism for rich bankers and capitalism for everyone else."
    Robert Reich (1946–), US economist and politician
    On the Paulson bank bail-out scheme.
    Source: Quoted in the Guardian (London) (January 21, 2009)
  • "If you talk to 100 people, 102 will tell you they hate bankers."
    Craig Warner (1964–), British screenwriter
    Source: "The Last Days of Lehman Brothers," BBC TV drama (September 9, 2009)
  • "It would be like Rome selling the Vatican to the Japanese to make it a hotel, and hiring the Pope as a bellboy."
    Craig Warner (1964–), British screenwriter
    On the prospect of the US government allowing Lehman Brothers investment bank to collapse.
    Source: "The Last Days of Lehman Brothers," BBC TV drama (September 9, 2009)
  • "You have to eventually nationalize US banks, you have to take the problem by the horns. In my view actually most of the US banking system is insolvent."
    Nouriel Roubini (1959–), US financial analyst
    Source: Interviewed on Bloomberg Television (January 29, 2009)
  • "Bonuses are back-and we're worth it."
    Anonymous
    Comment by an anonymous banker.
    Source: Quoted in Grazia (London) (August 2009)
  • "The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
    Matt Taibbi (1970–), US journalist
    On Goldman Sachs.
    Source: Rolling Stone (New York) (July 2009)
  • "The Bank finds itself in a position rather like that of a church whose congregation attends weddings and burials but ignores the sermons in between. Warnings are unlikely to be effective when people are being asked to change behaviour which seems to them highly profitable."
    Mervyn King (1948–), British governor of the Bank of England
    On the Bank of England's lack of regulatory powers.
    Source: Speech given at the Mansion House, City of London (June 17, 2009)
  • "It is not sensible to allow large banks to combine high-street retail banking with risky investment banking or funding strategies, and then provide an implicit state guarantee against failure. Privately owned and managed institutions that are too big to fail sit uneasily with a market economy."
    Mervyn King (1948–), British governor of the Bank of England
    Source: Speech given at the Mansion House, City of London (June 17, 2009)
  • "Think of the indispensable contribution bankers will make to Britain’s recovery, on one condition: that they are allowed to become indecently rich. It is a small price to pay."
    Bruce Anderson, British journalist
    Source: Independent (London) (October 26, 2009)
  • "Never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many."
    Mervyn King (1948–), British governor of the Bank of England
    Referring to the British government’s bank bail-out in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008–09.
    Source: Speech to Edinburgh business leaders (October 2009)
  • "Politicians and policymakers became victims of a sort of Stockholm syndrome. Having been taken hostage by the bankers, they began to identify with their interests."
    Ruth Sunderland, British financial journalist
    On the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2008–09.
    Source: Observer (London) (October 4, 2009)
  • "Bankers were scapegoats for the whole Reagan–Thatcher era, which exalted finance and humbled industry, and which had allowed the fruits of progress to accrue disproportionately to the rich and super-rich."
    Robert Skidelsky (1939–), British historian
    Source: Keynes—The Return of the Master (2009)

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