Confrontational things, admission of error, admission of defeat, restructuring, laying people off - those are not American ideals.

I see myself as a private-equity investor that helps rebuild companies. Restructuring is a cottage industry in that there aren't that many serious practitioners.

There is no evidence that more regulation makes things better. The most highly regulated industry in America is commercial banking, and that didn't save those institutions from making terrible decisions.

Banking, I would argue, is the most heavily regulated industry in the world. Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things.

Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things. If we could figure out that the subprime thing was a train wreck that was coming, where were the regulators?

The one term I don't like to be called is a 'vulture.' Because to me, a vulture is a kind of asset-stripper that eats dead flesh off the bones of a dead creature. Our bird should be the phoenix, the bird that reinvents itself, recreates itself from its ashes. And that's much closer to what it is that we really do.