Backporch

Richard Sullivan
"The whole mess could have been avoided if someone decided to define the damn thing, don't you think?"

U.S. District Judge, at a New York court hearing, discussing the fuzzy definition of "subprime" that is key to the Securities and Exchange Commission's high-profile lawsuit accusing former Freddie Mac executives of wrongdoing during the financial crisis

Bill Brandt
"Many of these municipal leaders appear ready to sacrifice bond-holders on the altar of the taxpayers rather than the other way around."

Chairman of the Illinois Finance Authority, discussing Berkshire Hathaway's decision to end a large bet on the municipal-bond market

Tom Braithwaite
"Implicit-and sometimes explicit-in the wave of London ire at Mr. Lawsky is that he is a publicity-seeking, showboating, impertinent arriviste. ... Mr. Lawsky is all of those things. That doesn't make him wrong."

Financial Times columnist, talking about Benjamin Lawsky, New York's Superintendent of Financial Services, and how the Standard Chartered money-laundering allegations are straining relations between U.K. and U.S. financial regulators

Jamie Dimon
"I saw it all pass in front of my eyes. I saw the headlines, the investigations, the uproar, the breathlessness. 'Dimon Loses Luster,' 'Dimon in the Rough.'"

JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO, on how embarrassed he felt after learning the infamous London Whale incident, which heblithely dismissed at first, caused multibillion-dollar trading losses

Greg Donaldson
"The banks have no moral authority at the moment. Jamie Dimon had it, but that's done."

Chairman of Donaldson Capital Management, on the many setbacks that have muted the influence of key banking leaders

John Corbett
"Investors want to invest in something that has an offensivestory. ... If it's just replacing Trups, that sounds like a tread water story."

President and CEO, Center- State Banks of Florida,on why raising capital to replace trust-preferred securities is a challenge

Richard Eggers
"It was a stupid stunt and I'm not real proud of it; but to fire somebody for something like this after seven good years of employment is a dirty trick."

68-year-old Vietnam veteran, who spent two days in jail in 1963 for using a replica dime in a laundromat, after Wells Fargo Home Mortgage fired him under a new Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. rule barring anyone convicted of transactional crimes from banking jobs