Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross Jr. states that the U.S. government “seems to hate” big banks and is imposing new regulations placing them at a competitive disadvantage.
Some quotes:
On Europe:
“I don’t think it’s going to be disaster.”
“I think we’ll go through agonizing moments, but at the end of the day, Europe needs two things: Somebody needs to write a very big check, and somebody needs to be the policeman.”
“Longer-term, the EU will be taking more centralized control of fiscal [affairs]. But shorter-term, what will have to happen is that they’ll have to bring in the [International Monetary Fund], partly to write a check and partly to act as the policeman. The IMF is used to being the policeman,” he said.
“In terms of the countries like Greece, Spain, and Portugal, the budget deficits and debt are only part of their problem. The more serious problem I think is that the economies are dysfunctional. Their labor laws are bad. Doing business there is very, very difficult. Nobody pays taxes. They need all kinds of structural reform, and that’s going to be the hard part.”
On Obama:
“The problem with the big banks is that the government seems to hate them.”
“The new Consumer Financial Protection group has just recently issued an 800-page document telling the big banks what to expect when they come in for their inspection. That’s on top of the normal inspections from the OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and the Federal Reserve.”
“So there’s another whole layer of rules being imposed on the big banks. Also, they’re now being required to hold more capital than smaller banks. So I think the problem with the big banks is they used to have competitive advantages and now they’re about to be in a competitively disadvantaged position.”
On S&P downgrade:
“First of all, I don’t agree with the downgrade. I think to have us downgraded and have France and five other EU countries Triple-A is silly. I don’t believe they are better credits than we are. ”
“I think what was good about the downgrade is that it was kind of a wakeup call to Washington and to the public at large that there is a problem coming up.”
On politics:
Political dysfunction is “the determination of this administration and the Democrats in the Congress to wage class warfare. And until they drop that, we will probably still have stalemates.”
Payroll tax cut “it will be bad because it would be a negative. It would take money out of circulation. But the argument isn’t over whether to extend it, the argument is over how to pay for it.’
Full video below:
