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.
It's important to have a sound idea, but the really important thing is the implementation.
Shale gas, if left to flourish, could create several hundred thousand more jobs.
Banking, I would argue, is the most heavily regulated industry in the world. Regulations don't solve things. Supervision solves things.
I think partly the decline in the peso was due to worry about renegotiation of NAFTA, but I think we also need to think about some other mechanisms for making the peso/dollar exchange rate a bit more stable.
Each weekend I play at least one and maybe two sets of tennis a day. My doubles team was in the finals recently at my tennis club in Palm Beach and lost a tiebreaker after a three-hour match. I must confess, by the end of the three hours, I was relieved it was over.
You cannot just keep borrowing more and more and keep spending more and more without eventually having a day of reckoning.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a bank being big. In fact, there are some good arguments about universality of geography that in theory, if you have all your eggs in one little community, and some big employer goes out, that could be your downfall.
If trade deficits are good, why is China so pleased that they run a huge trade surplus? It's perfectly obvious that if China hadn't been such a huge net-exporter, it never would have grown at the rate that it did.
The rules of origin in NAFTA need some tightening. Rules of origin are what let material outside of NAFTA to come in and benefit from all the taxes and tariff reductions within NAFTA.
The E.U., China, and Japan all talk free trade, and they all practice protectionism.
Everybody talks about tariffs as the first thing. Tariffs are the last thing. Tariffs are part of the negotiation. The real trick is going to be increase American exports. Get rid of some of the tariff and non-tariff barriers to American exports.
One of the problems with industries that have been in relatively long-term declines is that, very often, the managements in those industries develop a kind of loser mentality. And when you ask them what's wrong with the business, they'll point to extraneous forces.
If you add up all the promises any politician makes, the math doesn't work. Hillary Clinton's math doesn't work; Donald's math probably doesn't work. I think you have to listen to their campaign pitches more as symbolic, more as metaphors.
The whole idea of a trade deal is to build a fence around participants inside and give them an advantage over the outside. So there's a conceptual flaw in that, one of many conceptual flaws in NAFTA.
Mexico has 44 treaties with other countries that make it very advantageous to do international shipping from Mexico rather than from the United States.
The United States is the least protectionist country in the world but has the largest trade deficit, while other countries are highly protectionist and have huge trade surpluses. This cannot continue.
I still like TIPS (Treasury inflation-protected securities), and I think a big opportunity is coming in the municipal bond market.
I think there's a big difference between the impact of trade agreements on corporate America and the impact on Mr. and Mrs. America. Corporate America has adjusted to them by investing lots of capital offshore... What we're doing is we're exporting jobs and importing products instead of exporting products and keeping jobs.
The E.U. is one of our largest trading partners, and any negotiations legally must be conducted at the E.U. level and not with individual nations.
