No One Can Forecast The Economy With

Banks Don't Want Certain Asset Classes, And That's Created Opportunities For Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Silicon Valley. In This Case I Think He Was Referring To Some Of The European Banks Shedding Assets, And The Big Buyers Are Probably Not Going To Be Big American Banks. Someone Like Blackstone May Have A Very Good Chance To Buy Those Assets, Leverage Them, Borrow Up A Little Bit, And Do Something Good There.

But In General, As Countries Get Wealthier, There's Going To Be More Savings, Which Means You're Going To Have Intermediation. So Part Of It Is Just The Huge Growth In Wealth, And Part Of It Was Globalization - These Companies, These Clients Getting Much Bigger And Much More Global.

I Don't Think You Could Have A Banker Serving In A Major Role In Washington In The Next 10 Years. I Just Don't Think It's Going To Happen - It's Just Not Politically Feasible - So I Don't Spend Much Time Thinking About It. Do I Think I Could Do A Good Job? Maybe. It's Possible.

People Thought They Were Going To Make A Lot Of Money. And Then At One Point, It Got Too Hot, And The Government Wanted To Knock It Down. Trying To Get It Up And Then Knock It Down, Both Were A Mistake. And Part Of The Reason, Some People Think, Is That They Wanted To Equitize Some Of Their Companies. A Healthy Stock Market Helps Equitize Companies And Reduce The Country's Debt Burden.

I Think One Could Argue That There's More Political Input Into The Regulatory Side, And On The Regulatory Side There Seem To Be Fewer People With Financial And Banking Experience - There Are More Lawyers, Academics, Economists, Maybe Politicians Now.