You cannot prove this in real time, but when economists 20 years from now write a book on the recovery, it may well be entitled, It could have been much better.

A bank is a relationship. I can't desert you and expect to have a strong relationship afterward. If I told someone, "I know you've been buying milk from me and you need milk to survive. But the price is no longer $2 a gallon. It's going to be $40 a gallon. I'm going to bankrupt you." What do you guys think of me? You would hate us.

Banks don't want certain asset classes, and that's created opportunities for private equity, hedge funds, Silicon Valley. In this case I think he was referring to some of the European banks shedding assets, and the big buyers are probably not going to be big American banks. Someone like Blackstone may have a very good chance to buy those assets, leverage them, borrow up a little bit, and do something good there.

We have a lot of people who are Republicans, a lot of people who are Democrats, and it's not just because of business reasons.

We represent companies from around the world who say, "I want to look at Japanese companies. I want to invest in Japan."

I completely agree with the concept that American citizens shouldn't expect that a failure of a bank would cost them money, or that it would hurt the economy.

At Travelers, we were much more opportunistic. It was very successful, but it wasn't an integrated financial services company. We had a property casualty company, a life company, a brokerage company. We were a financial conglomerate. It wasn't a unified, coordinated strategy of any sort. When it merged with Citi, that became a big issue; Citi, at that time, wasn't yet a fully integrated, coordinated company.