“I remain fundamentally optimistic aboutWall Street as a marketplace and as a vehicle for wealth creation. Itsfuture will rightly depend on several variables, chief among thembeing human choices; whether they be rationally, emotionally, subjectivelyor objectively made. Financial engineering taught us that ifit could be quantified, it could be qualified. We learned about howto use leverage and have abused that knowledge for a myriad ofreasons. We became practitioners of the transaction-based model, but forgot that long before the abacus there was trust and integrity,anchors of relationship-based models common with Middle East andAsian markets. It goes back to a handshake, the first and enduringexample of mutual consensus.”

“The question is not whether we should or should not regulate; itis how much should we regulate and who the regulators shouldbe. We went overboard on deregulation under Reagan. UnderBush, many people lost in the casino. Now we have the Obamaadministration overreacting and overreaching with regulation thatdoes the exact opposite of wealth creation. If we are to have changewe can believe in, then we could start by replacing the majorityof the lawyers in regulatory agencies with actual experienced, successfulbusiness veterans. They would have recognized the early warningsigns of many of the financial debacles created by the bubble-bustcycle.”

“I am not in the market to create jobs, build anempire, or leave a legacy; those are the positive fallout of successfuleconomic warfare. My prime objective is wealth creation.”

“I believe the crisis started when we started prioritizing redistribution of wealth instead of its creation.”

“It's all about the ripple effects of “wealth creation”. What comes after you make it matters much more than before.”

“One of the advantages of living in a constitutional federal republicis that we have the ability, if not the duty, as citizens to repair orreplace those acts of legislation under which we have agreed to live.We must act when it has become evident that said legislationno longer serves us as a people or advances the principles uponwhich this nation was founded, one of these being “the pursuit ofhappiness,” which may only be secured through wealth creation.If it burdens the debt obligation of the government, it cannotbe creating wealth. If it does not advance the cause of regainingAmerican competitive dominance in the global marketplace, it is notcreating wealth. If legislation and regulation were proposed thattaught people how to fish instead of providing fish, then the unemployedwould find a way to create jobs for each other. Wealthcreation is mankind’s natural objective when given the opportunityand the tools.”

“trade and wealth creation is not all upside. It is failure, too.Failure is a necessary component to growth and success. Babe Ruthstruck out 1,330 times but also hit 714 home runs. We need to letfailing entities fail. Only then will successful people turn these enterprisesback into wealth-creating vehicles again. “Too big to fail” is aconcept that perpetuates failure and saps vitality from the rest of thewealth creators to do so.”