"You can't fall back on the private sector and say, 'You take care of the nation's banking system.' That's a fundamental function of the government, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC, etc. All of those agencies have a major role to play there"
About this Quote
The roster of institutions - the Fed, Treasury, FDIC - functions like a roll call of legitimacy. Naming them performs competence and inevitability: these are not partisan preferences but the standing machinery of the state. The phrase “fundamental function” is doing heavy lifting, recasting intervention not as a bailout or a political choice but as basic maintenance of the republic’s operating system.
Subtextually, this is a defense of emergency power in technocratic clothing. It’s also a permission slip for unpopular actions: liquidity backstops, guarantees, rescues, forced mergers - the kind of moves that look like favoritism unless framed as safeguarding the “nation’s” system. By widening the frame from banks to “the nation,” Cheney folds Wall Street stability into national security logic, a familiar rhetorical move for a post-9/11 executive branch.
Context matters: this reads like the language of crisis governance, shaped by memories of systemic failures and the political need to insist that letting banks fail isn’t “free market discipline” when the consequences cascade onto everyone else. The line is less about trust in government than about fear of what happens when government refuses to own the downside.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Cheney, Dick. (2026, January 18). You can't fall back on the private sector and say, 'You take care of the nation's banking system.' That's a fundamental function of the government, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC, etc. All of those agencies have a major role to play there. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cant-fall-back-on-the-private-sector-and-say-17596/
Chicago Style
Cheney, Dick. "You can't fall back on the private sector and say, 'You take care of the nation's banking system.' That's a fundamental function of the government, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC, etc. All of those agencies have a major role to play there." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cant-fall-back-on-the-private-sector-and-say-17596/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"You can't fall back on the private sector and say, 'You take care of the nation's banking system.' That's a fundamental function of the government, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the FDIC, etc. All of those agencies have a major role to play there." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/you-cant-fall-back-on-the-private-sector-and-say-17596/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
