Power Point: Strive for freedom to fail

"Only if we have the freedom to fail will we have the freedom to succeed."

- U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson at the Fortune 500 Forum this afternoon. As Paulson opened Fortune's confab in Washington D.C. today, he noted that the global financial system must be fixed so that any failure of a single component in the system--such as, we might presume, AIG (AIG) or Lehman Brothers (LEHMQ)--doesn't threaten to bring down the entire system. Indeed, regulation is outmoded and must be repaired, but even more critically, Paulson said, "We need to get to the place in this country where no institution is too big or too interconnected to fail." Regulation alone is never going to solve the problem, he added, "because no regulator is so good."