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We've always been modestly leveraged, and we've never believed in a great deal of leverage on either our private equity business or on our investment banking business. And I think it really goes back to my uncle and dad growing up in the Depression and just seeing what happened to people who were overly levered.

You know, when the cost of capital goes down, when credit becomes cheap, people start taking greater and greater risks.

The unique danger today is the possibility that we may face longer-term stagnation as a consequence of relying too heavily on borrowed money.

Obviously, there has to be a profound change in direction. Otherwise, interest on the national debt will start eating up virtually every penny that we have.

We have to reverse spending trends that are not job-creating.

It's only when the markets are perceived to have exhausted themselves on the downside that they turn. Trying to prevent them from going down just merely prolongs the agony.

While conventional wisdom has traditionally sided against borrowing from retirement savings, sentiment has shifted toward borrowing from one's own assets with the realization that other forms of credit come at a much higher cost and often are not even available to borrowers with limited means and urgent needs.

The unjustified swelling of the budgetary deficit and the accumulation of public debts are just as destructive as adventurous stock-jobbing.

Leverage is great when it works, and when it doesn't work, it creates a lot of issues. So I think if you limit the amount of leverage that people can borrow, or that banks can borrow, I think you'll find that you'll have a lot less issues going forward.