Quotes from Henry Paulson

A study by Treasury economists estimated that a country with a tax rate one percentage point lower than another country's attracts 3 percent more capital. It's not surprising then, that average OECD corporate tax rates have trended steadily downward.

The idea of being Treasury secretary in the abstract appealed to me, but my initial inclination was that it wasn't right for me to take that step.

When I left the Treasury, there was a poll that showed - and I don't remember the numbers exactly right - something like 90% of the people were against TARP. It prevented a disaster, but you don't get credit for a disaster that people don't see.

I grew up on a farm - I know the smell of horse manure. It does smell better than pig manure.

I grew up with a strong set of values - and one was never judging someone by how much money they had.

I would come to New York, work, and then get out of New York. I didn't go out to dinner with other people on the Management Committee. I didn't socialize. I didn't politick.

In just about every area of society, there's nothing more important than ethics.

I look forward to the day when China has a truly market-determined solution... To get there, you need to have a currency that is market-determined, an open capital market, and you are going to need a competitive, open financial system.

The income disparity is a huge issue. And I think that the only solution to this - there is no easy solution - are fundamental changes. That the world is changing quicker than our policies are changing. And we need the kinds of policies that will let us have a competitive economy going forward.

No bank should be too big or too complex to fail, but almost any bank is too big to liquidate quickly, particularly in the midst of a crisis.

Until we stem the housing correction, until the biggest part of that is behind us and we have more stability in housing prices, we're going to continue to have turmoil in the financial markets.

I've always said, 'I don't want to be irrelevant.'

The Chinese have done some extraordinary things in terms of the investments they've made in alternative sources of energy.

The country is polarized. And I think part of it - it is not just social media. We get our facts from different places. People self-select with so many different cable channels and so many sources. I think that is a huge problem.

Foreclosure is to no one's benefit. I've heard estimates that mortgage investors lose 40 to 50 percent on their investment if it goes into foreclosure.

My dad was somewhat of a naturalist and used to teach us about different birds and trees. So did a fifth grade teacher who made a lasting impact on me; to this day, I remember his lessons about counting the needles on pine trees, seeing if they are twisted or straight, and about checking the tips of oak leaves to see if they are pointed or lobed.

When you have a big, ugly problem, there's never going to be a neat, elegant solution that is totally painless or without a cost.

It is important that China stop its over-reliance on municipal debt to finance infrastructure. I take comfort in the fact that China's leaders understand this.

China needs a currency that reflects underlying economic fundamentals.

What began as a subprime lending problem has spread to other, less risky mortgages and contributed to excess home inventories that have pushed down home prices for responsible homeowners.

An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention.

It's better to have the taxpayer pay for the losses than have the United States of America become an economic wasteland. If the financial system collapses, it's really, really hard to put it back together again.

Xi Jinping is a very strong and ambitious leader who is looking to make a lot of changes in China. He is not looking to follow a Western model based on universal suffrage. That is for sure.

When you're boiling in oil, in the middle of a crisis, the challenges are so consuming there is no time for anything else.