Political Quotes

“One of the powers of the systemic risk council is, in fact, the power to break up large financial institutions. It is not one of the things they would do, but it is a power which resides in our bill for them to do that. I couldn't agree more about the excessive risks that institutions have taken, but there is a distinction. I always think it is more about what risks these institutions pose. Do they have capital standards, leverage standards, liquidity standards that are in place? As we were discussing earlier, of the 10 largest financial institutions in the world, the United States has 1. Of the top 50, 5 are in Canada, a country with which my colleague is more familiar than most. We have four. They have had very few financial problems during this crisis, not because of the size of their institutions so much as they are far better regulated in terms of what they can do, what risks they can assume. The point my colleague is making is a very sound one, to make sure we are not seeing our system exposed to the kind of actions that can bring it down. But I wanted to at least mention to him that we do have the power to divest, and we are trying to work on that issue of excessive risk.”