A biography for Rick Santellihasn’t been written yet.
“When you are facing the wilderness on your own, you have a totally different attitude to someone who works in government or who has a monthly cheque.”
“Working with Russia, we worked with Iran. Are they our friends? You have to take each situation uniquely.”
“I've talked about commodity price volatility in the past: go back to the tape... I never said it was about inflation.”
“Government is promoting bad behavior... Do we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages? This is America!”
“Printing money - is it really the answer? ... If we just print a million dollars for every man, woman, and child in the country and handed it to them, won't that fix everything? Because in order to really look at printing - I like to take everything to the extreme.”
“When it comes to policies of central bankers, the biggest systemic risk we have... are those policies.”
“You need more people to perpetuate a myth because if the people stop the myth is known to all.”
“I try to avoid political ties.”
“If the country is ever attacked as it was on 9/11, we all respond with a sense of urgency.”
“How about we all stop paying our mortgages! It's a moral hazard.”
“If you trade in paper, the notion of many who trade gold - the Ayn Randers - if the financial world comes to an end, they're going to have the gold. If you're playing in ETFs, you're going to have a piece of paper.”
“I don't believe anyone should ignore all the fires around you and stand pat and not worry about getting singed.”
“We need to understand that in the end, if we're going to make a positive difference in the future, we can't have election cycles where one side, the middle and the right side, they talk trash.”
“Let me see the 'Cuban missiles on the island' picture. Trump needs to see it before networks need to see it.”
“One thing that served me well with clients was that you back your winners and you back your losers.”
“We are a republic, very inefficient. If you want a really efficient form of government, you have a king or a dictator. And in the end, you hope it's a benevolent one. But then you could get things done. There's no lurching; there's no bumps. That's the cornerstone of checks and balances.”
“Challenging leaders is as American as it gets.”
“Many of us, of course, have children, and I think that the type of country that we are going to leave in our wake by rewarding bad behavior... is not a better handoff to the next generation and generation after that.”
“No, traditions and norms aren't rules in the Constitution. There's a difference between a tradition and a law.”
“A Treasury Secretary or a President should be out here not fighting S&P, not grabbing the other coach and slapping him around, taking the umpire behind the barn. He should be getting the team psyched to overcome.”