The Global Financial Crisis Quotes

2009 was a tough year, but Australia rose to the challenge of the global financial crisis. It shows what can be done when we all join together and work together, governments of all persuasions state, territory and local; businesses large and small; unions and local communities right across the nation. ~ Kevin Rudd

Obama occasionally pointed out that the post–Cold War moment was always going to be transitory. The rest of the world will accede to American leadership, but not dominance. I remember a snippet from a column around 9/11: America bestrides the world like a colossus. Did we? It was a story we told ourselves. Shock and awe. Regime change. Freedom on the march. A trillion dollars later, we couldn't keep the electricity running in Baghdad. The Iraq War disturbed other countries - including U.S. allies - in its illogic and destruction, and accelerated a realignment of power and influence that was further advanced by the global financial crisis. By the time Obama took office, a global correction had already taken place. Russia was resisting American influence. China was throwing its weight around. Europeans were untangling a crisis in the Eurozone.

Obama didn't want to disengage from the world; he wanted to engage more. By limiting our military involvement in the Middle East, we'd be in a better position to husband our own resources and assert ourselves in more places, on more issues. To rebuild our economy at home. To help shape the future of the Asia Pacific and manage China's rise. To open up places like Cuba and expand American influence in Africa and Latin America. To mobilize the world to deal with truly existential threats such as climate change, which is almost never discussed in debates about American national security. ~ Ben Rhodes

...Laying blame for the global financial crisis on any single individual, let alone on an eighty-three year old man, seems as ethically flawed as some of the broader moral failures permeating society in the lead-up to the crisis. ~ Jeremy Balkin

The global financial crisis - missed by most analysts - shows that most forecasters are poor at pricing in economic/financial risks, let alone geopolitical ones. ~ Nouriel Roubini

Vladimir Putin shot out of obscurity in 1999 by exploiting growing nostalgia for the USSR, fueled by the disappointment, uncertainty and crisis that brought Yeltsin's reform era to a shuddering halt. Once in power the following year, Putin set about building an authoritarian regime whose control would expand for more than a decade, until soaring corruption on top of another economic downturn - a much smaller one, triggered by the global financial crisis of 2008 - prompted another backlash. ~ Gregory Feifer

The Global Financial Crisis (2008-?); it is not a matter of noblesse oblige as of vitesse oblige. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Senator Obama will be taking office at a critical juncture. There are many pressing challenges facing the international community, including the global financial crisis and global warming. We look forward to working closely with President-elect Obama and his team to address these challenges. ~ Helen Clark

Book I wrote this book because I believe there is still hope to prevent the catastrophic events planned by the global elite ruling class. In a desperate attempt to protect their monopoly on the global financial system, they are willing to start World War III. It is their intention to use ISIS to ignite a massive conflict in the Middle East, a conflict designed to draw Russia and China in so they can start a global war. ~ James Garcia

One buzzphrase that arose was 'sustainable development', which was used in two very different senses by opposing groups, because it left vague by what metric sustainability might be measured. Environmental groups meant by 'sustainability' a holistic approach by which life as we know it might be sustained. Scientists talked about 'sustainable cities' to mean cities that would not be destroyed by flooding in the wake of global warming. But to others, 'sustainable' meant a financial approach by which the oil industry as we know it might be sustained: sustainability was the minimum amount of environmental care that was affordable by those whose activities harmed the environment. ~ Steven Poole

The air, soil and water cumulatively degrade; the climates and oceans destabilize; species become extinct at a spasm rate across continents; pollution cycles and volumes increase to endanger life-systems at all levels in cascade effects; a rising half of the world is destitute as inequality multiplies; the global food system produces more and more disabling and contaminated junk food without nutritional value; non-contagious diseases multiply to the world's biggest killer with only symptom cures; the vocational future of the next generation collapses across the world while their bank debts rise; the global financial system has ceased to function for productive investment in life-goods; collective-interest agencies of governments and unions are stripped while for-profit state subsidies multiply; police state laws and methods advance while belligerent wars for corporate resources increase; the media are corporate ad vehicles and the academy is increasingly reduced to corporate functions; public sectors and services are non-stop defunded and privatized as tax evasion and transnational corporate funding and service by governments rise at the same time at every level. ~ John McMurtry

The confidence of the entire global financial system rests on the U.S. dollar. Confidence in the dollar rests on the solvency of the Fed's balance sheet. And that solvency rests on a thin sliver of . . . gold. ~ James Rickards

Even more fundamental than housing to the global financial economy is the idea that the U.S. government is a safe asset. ~ Ezra Klein

This book argues that through inclusive finance, companies can make money and help solve the global problem of poverty. By inclusive finance we mean opening access to high-quality financial services to everyone who needs them, especially low-income and previously excluded people. We also discuss how ~ Elizabeth Rhyne

If the American government can't stand behind the dollar, the world's benchmark currency, then the global financial system will very likely enter a new era in which there is much less trade and much less economic growth. It would be, by most accounts, the largest self-imposed financial disaster in history. ~ Adam Davidson

Economic globalization creates wealth, but only for the elite who benefit from the surge of consolidations, mergers, global scale technology, and financial activity. ~ Anita Roddick

Reliable numbers about the amount of dirty money around the world are difficult to come by. But according to an estimate by the nonprofit Global Financial Integrity group, $1 trillion vanishes from the developing world's economies every year. ~ Sri Mulyani Indrawati

The rest of the world needs the US economy and financial system to recover in order for it to revive. We remain at the center of global economic activity with financial and trade ties to every region of the globe. ~ Timothy Geithner

Altermodern is an in-progress redefinition of modernity in the era of globalisation, stressing the experience of wandering in time, space and mediums. The term 'altermodern has its roots in the idea of 'other-ness (Latin alter = 'other, with English connotation of 'different) and suggests a multitude of possibilities, of alternatives to a single route. It suggests that the historical period defined by postmodernism is coming to an end, symbolised by global financial crises. ~ Nicolas Bourriaud

Behind the panic: financial warfare over future of global bank power ~ F. William Engdahl

The insurance companies do not refer to the key policy rate when they send their statements. We can only control that rate. Long-term interest rates are determined largely by global financial markets. ~ Mario Draghi

What it mainly revealed was that one of the most insidious of the "hidden injuries of class" in North American society was the denial of the right to do good, to be noble, to pursue any form of value other than money – or, at least, to do it and to gain any financial security or rewards for having done. The passionate hatred of the "liberal elite" among right-wing populists came down, in practice, to the utterly justified resentment towards a class that had sequestered, for its own children, every opportunity to pursue love, truth, beauty, honor, decency, and to be afforded the means to exist while doing so. The endless identification with soldiers ("support our troops!) – that is, with individuals who have, over the years, been reduced to little more than high tech mercenaries enforcing of a global regime of financial capital – lay in the fact that these are almost the only individuals of working class origin in the US who have figured out a way to get paid for pursuing some kind of higher ideal, or at least being able to imagine that's what they're doing. Obviously most would prefer to pursue higher ideals in way that did not involve the risk of having their legs blown off. The sense of rage, in fact, stems above all from the knowledge that all such jobs are taken by children of the rich. ~ David Graeber

The presently existing global financial and monetary system will disintegrate during the near term. The collapse might occur this spring, or summer, or next autumn; it could come next year; it will almost certainly occur during President William Clinton's first term in office; it will occur soon. That collapse into disintegration is inevitable, because it could not be stopped now by anything but the politically improbable decision by leading governments to put the relevant financial and monetary institutions into bankruptcy reorganization. ~ Lyndon LaRouche

I think the money for the solutions for global poverty is on Wall Street. Wall Street allocates capital. And we need to get capital to the ideas that are successful, whether it's microfinance, whether it's through financial literacy programs, Wall Street can be the engine that makes capital get to the people who need it. ~ Kabir Sehgal

The stability of global financial markets is a public good. If governments fail to protect this public good, then those who suffer are the working people of the world whose jobs, whose homes, and whose standard of living depends on it. ~ Kevin Rudd

The global financial collapse exposed the longstanding myth that commercial exchange is a primary institution. There are no examples in history where people created commercial markets and exchange before creating a culture. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

The free enterprise concept inherent in the economic model of capitalism should mean common people, or lower and middle class wage-earners, have greater potential to rise up and gain financial independence. In reality, however, free enterprise all too often leads to an almost total lack of government regulation that in turn allows the global elite to run amuck in Gordon Gecko-style financial coups. ~ James Morcan

I am for a close global association in trade and financial matters, rather than the opposite possibility of excessive nationalism, as manifested in the two world wars. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

The global financial system consists of firms in the financial services sector - banks, hedge funds, insurance companies and the like - and various governmental agencies who are charged with regulating these firms. ~ John L. Casti

Through exploitation of its influence over global financial affairs, the United States has been able to cover the costs of its hegemonic position, preserve a false domestic prosperity, and mask the consequences of its relative political and economic decline. ~ Robert Gilpin

The principal linkages between Japan and the U.S. global economies are trade, financial markets, and commodity markets. ~ Mark Zandi

Jesus was the poorest of the poor. Roman Catholicism, which claims to be His church, is the richest of the rich, the wealthiest institution on earth. () How come, that such an institution, ruling in the name of this same itinerant preacher, whose want was such that he had not even a pillow upon which to rest his head, is now so top-heavy with riches that she can rival - indeed, that she can put to shame - the combined might of the most redoubtable financial trusts, of the most potent industrial super-giants, and of the most prosperous global corporation of the world? ~ Avro Manhattan

Modern electrical power distribution technology is largely the fruit of the labors of two men - Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Compared with Edison, Tesla is relatively unknown, yet he invented the alternating electric current generation and distribution system that supplanted Edison's direct current technology and that is the system currently in use today. Tesla also had a vision of delivering electricity to the world that was revolutionary and unique. If his research had come to fruition, the technological landscape would be entirely different than it is today. Power lines and the insulated towers that carry them over thousands of country and city miles would not distract our view. Tesla believed that by using the electrical potential of the Earth, it would be possible to transmit electricity through the Earth and the atmosphere without using wires. With suitable receiving devices, the electricity could be used in remote parts of the planet. Along with the transmission of electricity, Tesla proposed a system of global communication, following an inspired realization that, to electricity, the Earth was nothing more than a small, round metal ball.
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With $150,000 in financial support from J. Pierpont Morgan and other backers, Tesla built a radio transmission tower at Wardenclyffe, Long Island, that promised - along with other less widely popular benefits - to provide communication to people in the far corners of the world who needed no more than a handheld rece ~ Christopher Dunn

Since 2001, people have been scared. There's been some really scary stuff that's been happening - 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, anthrax letters, D.C. sniper, global warming, global financial meltdown, bird flu, swine flu, SARS. I think people really feel like the system's breaking down. ~ Max Brooks

Sustainability is today's freedom crusade, because the next generation will not live free - will not have the freedom to pursue its economic dreams or to delight in all that nature has to offer - if our approach to the financial world and the natural are not grounded in sustainable values. That lack of sustainability will constrict everything in our lives. It will limit everything we might want to do. Unless we become less dependent on hydrocarbons, and unless we find a balance between the need for markets to be free enough to reward innovation and risk-taking but not so free as to reward recklessness that can destabilize the whole global economy, our lives will be reduced, redacted, and restricted. We will be overwhelmed by all the toxic assets we will produce in the Market and in Mother Nature. It will feel worse than had the Soviet Union won the Cold War, because we and our children will be enslaved by our financial debts and constricted by our ecological debts. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

The most serious problems lie in the financial sphere, where the economy's debt overhead has grown more rapidly than the 'real' economy's ability to carry this debt ... The essence of the global financial bubble is that savings are diverted to inflate the stock market, bond market and real estate prices rather than to build new factories and employ more labor. ~ Michael Hudson

I am proud of Edinburgh's status as a financial centre, but where is it on the index of global financial centres? Sixty-fourth. Below Hamilton, Casablanca and Mauritius. London, by contrast, is second only to New York. That's a link worth keeping. ~ Rory Bremner

Well, Marx is having a comeback. I hear him mentioned a lot in terms of the global financial situation and the general sense of injustice out there. A lot of economic experts in America refer to him without actually using the M word, but he's around. ~ David Byrne

MF Global used to be known as Man Financial, and it had a reasonably good reputation. It did a humdrum business placing commodities trades for fund managers as well as farmers, grain dealers and others whose livelihoods depend on the vagaries of commodity prices. ~ Gary Weiss

You know, oil prices from 2007, on the strength of a very robust global economy and a very robust emerging China, many of you will recall, ramped up to near $150 a barrel. Then we had the financial - U.S. financial collapse. Oil prices collapsed all the way down to $40 a barrel. ~ Rex Tillerson

You need in the long run for stability, for economic growth, for jobs, as well as for financial stability, global economic institutions that make sure that growth to be sustained has to be shared, and are built on the principle that the prosperity of this world is indivisible. ~ Gordon Brown