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Countries don't go out of business....The infrastructure doesn't go away, the productivity of the people doesn't go away, the natural resources don’t go away. And so their assets always exceed their liabilities, which is the technical reason for bankruptcy. And that's very different from a company.

Walter Wriston

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Walter Wriston
Age: 85 †
Born: 1919
Born: August 3
Died: 2005
Died: January 19
Banker
Middletown
Connecticut
Walter Bigelow Wriston
Reason
Investing
Liabilities
Country
Countries
Liability
Different
Resources
Bankruptcy
Always
Company
Exceed
People
Natural
Infrastructure
Business
Productivity
Away
Technical
Doesn
Assets

More quotes by Walter Wriston

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A country does not go bankrupt.
Walter Wriston
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Capital will always go where it’s welcome and stay where it’s well treated. Capital is not just money. It’s also talent and ideas. They, too, will go where they’re welcome and stay where they are well treated.
Walter Wriston
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A truly global economy, as opposed to the multinational economy of the recent past, will require concessions of national power ... that seemed impossible a few years ago and which even now we can but partly imagine.
Walter Wriston
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The information revolution has changed wealth. Intellectual capital is far more important than money.
Walter Wriston
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All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the income tax law says.
Walter Wriston
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The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.
Walter Wriston
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Information about money has become almost as important as money itself.
Walter Wriston
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The greatest testimony to the human spirit that I'm witnessing now is the fact that people still come back to work, after all that has been done to them. They are still willing to participate for a more positive future if they would be sincerely invited.
Walter Wriston
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We're not in cultures which support learning we're in cultures that give us the message consistently: Don't mess up, don't make mistakes, don't make the boss look bad, don't give us any surprises. So we're asking for a kind of predictability, control, respect, and compliance that has nothing to do with learning.
Walter Wriston
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Capital goes to where it can escape taxation and be used to pay employees in sacks of rice.
Walter Wriston
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Failure is not a crime. Failure to learn from failure is.
Walter Wriston
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There'll be a growing disparity between economics and politics. An economy that grows so rapidly is intractably global. On the other hand, the current political system is intractably national. So there is a growing dichotomy between a global economy and locally based politics.
Walter Wriston
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One man saying that everything is wrong can command coast-to-coast attention in living color, a power not given to an absolute monarch a century ago.
Walter Wriston
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Banking is a branch of the information business.
Walter Wriston
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If we had a truth-in Government act comparable to the truth-in-advertising law, every note issued by the Treasury would be obliged to include a sentence stating: This note will be redeemed with the proceeds from an identical note which will be sold to the public when this one comes due.
Walter Wriston
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As long as capital-both human and money-can move toward opportunity, trade will not balance.
Walter Wriston
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It is a maxim of cryptology that what one man can devise, another can unravel. This principle keeps armies of tax lawyers and accountants employed, but adds nothing to our national productivity.
Walter Wriston
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Human capital will go where it is wanted, and it will stay where it is well treated. It cannot be driven it can only be attracted.
Walter Wriston
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Every line in the government's budget has its own constituency.
Walter Wriston
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Risk is not a dirty word.
Walter Wriston