Everything Wall St. Should Know About Ryan
He could be mistaken for a Wall Street banker. Or perhaps a hedge fund manager. Or even a managing director at a private equity firm, like Bain Capital.
Paul Ryan, with his clean-cut Brooks Brothers looks and wonky obsession with spreadsheets, could be just the archetype of a Wall Streeter.
Mitt Romney’s new running mate even trades stocks in his spare time. He’s a fan of the nation’s blue chips: among the stocks he owns are Apple, Exxon Mobil, General Electric, I.B.M., Procter & Gamble, Wells Fargo, Google, McDonald’s, Nike and Berkshire Hathaway, according to his latest disclosure filing. . .
But what does Mr. Ryan think about Wall Street? His views may surprise you.
Mr. Ryan, who voted in 1999 to repeal parts of the Glass-Steagall Act, allowing commercial and investment banks to merge, now appears to be in the same change-of-heart camp as Sandy Weill, the former chief executive of Citigroup, who recently declared that the banks should be broken up.
“We should make sure you can’t get too big where you’re going to become too big to fail and trigger a bailout,” Mr. Ryan said during a meeting with constituents in May in Wisconsin. “If you’re a bank and you want to operate like some nonbank entity like a hedge fund, then don’t be a bank. Don’t let banks use their customers’ money to do anything other than traditional banking.”
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/paul-ryan-and-what-wall-street-should-know/?hp