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It's extremely important for our banks to have more capital, higher quality capital.

Every central banker in the world pays attention to credit growth, but not in the U.S.

In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite well, but they decided they'd borrow a bit more and do even better.

I want to make Seoul more attractive. I want to make it a good investment.

The level of credit in Mexico has shown to be low. And where credit concentrates the most favors large corporations and not companies.

Fortunately, when Korea was struck by the 1997/8 financial crisis, that was a good opportunity for us to engage in fundamental reforms and strengthen our financial structure. As a result, our financial regulatory structure and regime have been very much strengthened.

Korea's early repayment of the full amount of loans from the IMF is a major milestone.

What people don't realize is that China papered over its last two credit bubbles, those in 1999 and 2004. The banks were never bailed out - they just exchanged their bad loans for questionable bonds from quasi-state organizations.

People with banking experience haven't all flocked to the biggest banks; community banks and regional banks, along with smaller trading houses and credit unions, have some very talented people.

Country banks are more flexible in their lending policies than their city brethren are.