Roger Altman on the housing crisis: "The natural excess of markets"

Q: Could the housing crisis have been prevented?

A: No. Not anywhere near in its entirety. This was the type of speculative excess we see periodically. We saw it in the dot-com bubble in the late '90s and in the S&L crisis in the late '80s and early '90s. It's the natural excess of markets.

~ Roger Altman, chairman of the boutique investment and private equity firm Evercore Partners (EVR), "Roger Altman On the Pain Ahead and Election 2008," BusinessWeek, December 3, 2007, interview with Maria Bartiromo

Roger Altman: "Private equity is very creative"

The flow of private equity transactions obviously has slowed sharply, but we're just moving into a different chapter of private equity. This is a permanent, powerful sector of finance. And it's gone through many chapters since the modern era began in the late '70s. Now we're entering a new chapter. So there will be plenty of private equity transactions, but they'll be different types of deals. They'll be more conservatively capitalized and will involve a lot more equity rather than leverage. But they will proceed, probably at a slower pace for the time being. Private equity is very creative.

~ Roger Altman, chairman of the boutique investment and private equity firm Evercore Partners (EVR), "Roger Altman On the Pain Ahead and Election 2008," BusinessWeek, December 3, 2007