Lloyd Blankfein on financial regulation
From Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: Taking to Twitter | Mad Money | CNBC · · CNBC
“The biggest risk of Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis is that our counterparties might not be good for it. It's not you, we knew where we were and fine, we were worried about our counterparties. So to the extent that you have certain things like stress tests, higher capital rules, certain kind of leverage tests that make sense, it's fine. But if you put layers and layers and belts and suspenders and another belt and another suspender, you bog down the system and you don't get to accomplish your social purpose.”
On , Lloyd Blankfein, Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Goldman Sachs, spoke about financial regulation during Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: Taking to Twitter | Mad Money | CNBC on CNBC.
About Lloyd Blankfein
Lloyd Blankfein released a memoir titled *Streetwise: Getting to and Through Goldman Sachs* in April 2026 and conducted a series of media interviews to promote the book. In these appearances, he discussed his upbringing in public housing in Brooklyn, his experience as an outsider at Harvard, and his rise to become CEO of Goldman Sachs. On the subject of higher education, Blankfein said he believes young people should not skip college to chase money and fame. He also commented on Harvard, stating that governmental scrutiny caused the university to make "course corrections." In multiple interviews, Blankfein argued that the financial system is accumulating risk that could lead to a future crisis. He used the metaphor of "dry tinder" building up on a forest floor, stating that a long period without a major crisis has led to complacency and the overvaluation of private assets. Blankfein said the next crisis would be harder to contain than 2008 because reforms have spread risk beyond the reach of regulators, though he noted that such distributed risk makes the system safer for smaller shocks. He attributed Goldman's survival of the 2008 crisis to its rigorous mark-to-market accounting and risk culture, and stated that if other banks had managed themselves the same way, there would not have been a banking crisis.