"Moral hazard is something I don't take lightly." — Henry Paulson

I've got to say our banking system is a safe and a sound one. And since the days when we've had federal deposit insurance in place, we haven't had a depositor who's got less than $100,000 in an account lose a penny. So the American people can be very, very confident about their accounts in our banking system.

The idea of being Treasury secretary in the abstract appealed to me, but my initial inclination was that it wasn't right for me to take that step.

I was secretary of the Treasury in 2008. In that role, I had the privilege to work with many talented men and women in government and the private sector who labored to pull our nation back from the brink of disaster.

All of us would like to have our children and their grandchildren grow up with at least the level of prosperity that we had. In the U.S., we seem to be very selfish because the older generation is not making the sacrifices.