China is an indomitable force, and they have a commitment for excellence.
Doing a me-too business, because it's you - the only person who cares about that is you. The market doesn't care if it's you. The market is pretty much being served. You better have something that the world doesn't have, because even then, you might screw it up through your own ineptitude and inexperience.
Today, whenever I'm under pressure to make a decision on a transaction but I don't know what the right one is, I try desperately to postpone it. I'll insist on more information - on doing extra laps around the intellectual parking lot - before committing. I take the same approach with people, too.
In the charitable world, I find myself giving to large projects that I think can make a large-scale impact.
In a financial crisis, only the Fed, as the lender of last resort, might stand between our economy and financial catastrophe. We must leave the Fed with the flexibility to provide liquidity in order to stop a financial panic.
We have limited time, and we have to maximize it.
I'm concerned with China growing at double or triple the rate of the West, that there will be tensions. One needs to do something to start addressing misunderstandings and frustration.
Deals really have to do with the overlap of what one side wants and the other side wants, and it's really just the discovery of where that overlap is and how you decide to get there.
There are no patents in finance.
I don't control the political world.
I love picking people. I started Blackstone, and we had no people, and now we have with our portfolio companies about 750,000 people all over the world. Everybody who is at a senior level has ultimately been picked by me.
As the world has become more predatory and aggressive, my impression is that the investment banking business has moved from being relationship-oriented to being increasingly transaction-oriented.
I have a saying: There are no brave old people in finance. Because if you're brave, you mostly get destroyed in your 30s and 40s. If you make it to your 50s and 60s and you're still prospering, you have a very good sense of how to avoid problems and when to be conservative or aggressive with your investments.
We need sobriety, rationality, and civility in the discussions on the regulation of financial institutions so that the banks can return in a robust manner to their central role in funding the economy.
Sleeping at night is not a specialty of entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur who is sleeping soundly, something bad is happening to that person; they just don't know it's happening yet.
My biggest job really is to figure other people out. I need to understand what makes a person tick.
Most youth are lacking critical life skills that make them employable and, most importantly, able to keep a job - things like teamwork, decision-making, and time management.
The concept of fair value accounting is correct and useful, but the application during periods of crisis is problematic. It's another one of those unintended consequences of making a rule that's supposed to be good that turns out the other way.
Next to my mom, I'm actually a shrinking violet.
I'm doing my sit-ups and watching CNBC. Suddenly, somebody starts talking about me on television... The business has gone into a weird zone of visibility. For those of us who have done it for a long time, it's strange.
