Richard Cordray
"Mark Twain once said if he had more time he'd write a shorter letter. Same thing for us. We're trying to boil things down."
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director, on the difficulty of simplifying mortgage disclosure regulations
John Stumpf
"I don't know anybody who says, 'I want to buy that house, I've got a good job, but it's that darn 3.5 percent mortgage rate holding me back.'"
Wells Fargo & Co. CEO, expressing doubt about how effective QE3 will be
Werner Wenning
"No investment banker needs to earn an amount in the double-digit millions."
Member of Deutsche Bank's board of directors, endorsing caps on corporate bonuses, a view at odds with its co-CEOs
Sallie Krawcheck
"It makes you weep blood out of your eyes."
Bank of America's former head of wealth management, on the complexity of the largest financial firms
Rob Rowe
"You don't want to deputize bankers as junior G-men. We're not good at it."
Senior counsel at the American Bankers Association, on a Treasury Department proposal tointensify how banks screen for money laundering
Ed Novak
"It's a strange case. We don't have the authority to go close an ice-cream store."
Pennsylvania Department of Banking spokesman, on a Pittsburgh ice-cream shop owner who is taking deposits and paying interest in the form of gift cards
John Faul
"All I can say, sir, is keep us in your prayers. We will need it."
Mayor of Atwater, Calif., speaking to a reporter about her city of 28,000 becoming the fourth in the state to face bankruptcy
Tim Pawlenty
"Get your snout out of the trough."
Newly appointed president and CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable, articulating his message to Wall Street in a June 2011 interview during his short-lived presidential bid
Bill Gross
"The U.S., in fact, is a serial offender, an addict whose habit extends beyond weed or cocaine and who frequently pleasures itself with budgetary crystal meth."
PIMCO bond fund manager, comparing unsustainable U.S. spending to drug addiction in his widely read investment outlook
