The Recession Quotes

When historians consider the significance of the Berlin crises of the mid-20th century, I do not believe that they will record it as an incident in the encirclement of freedom. The true view, in my judgment, will be to see it rather as a major episode in the recession of communism. ~ Robert Kennedy

We got into a recession because the global economy went into the recession and we're a big exporting nation. ~ Stephen Harper

No I don't think it was a myth at all, anymore than what the recession that the whole country was experiencing was a myth, which obviously seems like it's going to get worse and worse. ~ Lester Bangs

The great thing is, Internet allows you to create your own job, not just look for jobs other people are going to give you. And that, combined with the American spirit, I think, is going to help us come out of the recession faster than other countries. And I think it's going to help Africa come out of, you know, a century of slump. ~ Esther Dyson

Rising unemployment and the recession have been the price that we have had to pay to get inflation down. That price is well worth paying. ~ Norman Lamont

Although the recession is strong and although hard times await us in the next 2 or 3 months, Spain will continue to grow in the second quarter of 2009. ~ Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

In the recession people are going to be looking even more at what movie stars are wearing, as it provides a fantasy outlet. ~ Cher

Children are coming to school with trauma, everyday trauma, that they live under: violence in the homes, alcoholism in the community, unemployment that's 80 percent, not just during the recession. We need to help treat that before they can even go sit in a class and learn about math. ~ Denise Juneau

We spent $100 billion on education, saving the education system 300,000 teachers who were laid off because of the recession. We also put tens of thousands of lower income kids in college through Pell grants which has fundamentally all their opportunity. We did the same thing with regard to what we did on transportation. So we weren't' just trying to - we knew we had to do something big to keep us from going over the cliff into a depression and pull us out of hole. ~ Joe Biden

Labor force participation peaked in early 2000, so its decline began well before the Great Recession. A portion of that decline clearly relates to the aging of the baby boom generation. But the pace of decline accelerated with the recession. ~ Janet Yellen

A level of anxiety and tension and outright fear that so many people have felt, not only during the recession but during this slow economic recovery since. This made me very much want to up the conversation about how miracle-minded thinking applies to that area of life. ~ Marianne Williamson

The trouble is that the average trader on Wall Street, he or she is so young, he doesn't even remember the recession of 2001, let alone the previous one. ~ Nouriel Roubini

The Fed is pushing a variety of workarounds that would inject trillions in new money into the economy while bypassing the banking system altogether. Time will tell whether or not this will succeed. Meanwhile, a serious danger lurks around the corner. Once the recession is over, the lending will start again. With fractional-reserve banking and limitless supplies of cash on hand, we will likely see the overall price trends reversed, from deflation to inflation to possible hyperinflation. ~ Llewellyn Rockwell

I am upset and completely disappointed in the government, the millionaires and billionaires in the U.S. See what's happening to the country? Look at all the health problems, the economy, the recession and crime. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

The trade unions in the UK are campaigning around zero-hours contracts, which isn't about feminism, but it's a feminist issue. Women are affected by zero-hours contracts, and the recession has and is affecting women more than men. ~ Rachel Holmes

Canadians know that the promise of a recession didn't happen because of anything we did here. If you look at all the causes of the recession, problems in mortgage markets, the problems in the banking sector, the problems in government finance in countries like Greece, none of those problems were in present Canada. ~ Stephen Harper

The way the recession has affected Hollywood, a lot of actors that had robust opportunities before in film no longer have such plum options, so cable has done a good job of becoming a happy medium for artists deemed film actors. ~ Omari Hardwick

I have seen American determination in people like Debbi Sommers. She runs a furniture rental business for conventions in Las Vegas. When 9/11 hit, and again, when the recession tanked the conventions business, she didn't give up, close down, or lay off her people. She taught them not just to rent furniture, but also to manufacture it. ~ Mitt Romney

The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of the recession because that would just suck up and take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole. ~ Barack Obama

No one saw the recession coming. ~ Gordon Ramsay

If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis. ~ Tyler Cowen

At a time of recession, when there is a mounting glut of labour and uninvested savings, a reduction in wages and interest rates does not help. In fact, it deepens the recession. ~ Yanis Varoufakis

The simple fact of the matter is, as I know everyone in this room knows, that the recession that this country faced when this President took office was the worst since the Great Depression. ~ Jay Carney

Our first goal is to stop the recession and start with recovery. ~ Antonis Samaras

Nevada was hit hardest by the recession - highest unemployment, highest foreclosure rate, highest bankruptcy rate. ~ Brian Sandoval

But real-world questions aren't like word problems. A real-world problem is something like "Has the recession and its aftermath been especially bad for women in the workforce, and if so, to what extent is this the result of Obama administration policies?" Your calculator doesn't have a button for this. Because in order to give a sensible answer, you need to know more than just numbers. What shape do the job-loss curves for men and women have in a typical recession? Was this recession notably different in that respect? What kind of jobs are disproportionately held by women, and what decisions has Obama made that affect that sector of the economy? It's only after you've started to formulate these questions that you take out the calculator. But at that point the real mental work is already finished. Dividing one number by another is mere computation; figuring out what you should divide by what is mathematics. ~ Jordan Ellenberg

I talked with people starting up in the middle of the recession and employees, and supplies and office space were cheap. As far as companies that are already in existence, many became more creative with how they spent their money. A lot of them stopped wasting money that they didn't know they were wasting after they looked hard at their businesses. Some had to change business models because of the economy. Their market didn't exist or wasn't as big anymore. ~ JJ Ramberg

Then came the recession and the end of the Bush boom, and with it came the realization that we were all worker drones paying off our bloated mortgages, bloodsucking corporations and even each other- we are the dead ~ Lori Perkins

I believe very sincerely that we were extremely fortunate to have the recent recession while George Bush was President, just as we were very lucky that the recession of 1990 was under George H.W. Bush's presidency and the recession of 1981 was under Ronald Reagan. I think the fact that recessions tend to happen when Republicans are in the White House is a perfect example of God's divine providence. I've heard it said that the good Lord doesn't give you anything you can't handle, and maybe that's why he tries to always have us running things during economic downturns. ~ Jack Kimble

The recession came and we decided it would save a lot of bother if we just slept through it. So we programmed the computers to revive us when it was all over. ~ Douglas Adams

What most Americans mean when they say "the end of the recession" is, "When will it be back to normal? When can we get jobs? When will the employment rate be back to 4 percent or 5 percent?" ~ Joseph Stiglitz

(a) Recent U.S. income growth primarily occurs at the top 1 percent of the income distribution. (b) As a result there is growing inequality. (c) And those at the bottom and in the middle are actually worse-off today than they were at the beginning of the century. (d) Inequalities in wealth are even greater than inequalities in income. (e) Inequalities are apparent not just in income but in a variety of other variables that reflect standards of living, such as insecurity and health. (f) Life is particularly harsh at the bottom - and the recession made it much worse. (g) There has been a hollowing out of the middle class. (h) There is little income mobility - the notion of America as a land of opportunity is a myth. (i) And America has more inequality than any other advanced industrialized country, it does less to correct these inequities, and inequality is growing more than in many other countries. ~ Joseph E. Stiglitz

UC Merced is the University of California's newest campus and lies among farm fields in the San Joaquin Valley, 2 1/2 hours east of San Francisco and not far from where I spent most of my childhood. It's a part of California that has suffered deeply from the recession with high unemployment and a skyrocketing home foreclosure rate. ~ Lester Holt

Things are pretty good in Canada. We weathered the recession fairly well. And, of course, were up here up living here, we're watching American news and we're constantly saying, wow, it's not as bad as it is in the United States. ~ Rick Mercer

In response to the recession, the Obama administration chose to emphasize costly, short-term fixes - ineffective stimulus programs, myriad housing programs that went nowhere, and a rush to invest in 'green' companies. As a consequence, uncertainty over policy - particularly over tax and regulatory policy - slowed the recovery. ~ Glenn Hubbard

Around '75 when the recession hit, club owners started going to disco because it was cheaper for them to just buy a sound system than it was to hire a band. ~ Tommy Shaw

New York never felt the recession. New York never felt a depression. ~ John Catsimatidis

Recently released government economic statistics covering 2010, the first year of real recovery from the financial collapse of 2008, found that fully 93 percent of additional income gains coming out of the recession went straight into the wallets and purses of the top 1 percent. ~ Eric Alterman

The recession is everywhere. We need to be heard. Wouldn't it be great if there could be more referendums so we could have regular voting on specific points? ~ Joss Stone

Increased revenues, meaning higher taxes, will be a central element of any successful long-term budget plan, and President Obama is right to insist that the wealthy - the slice of America that has come through the recession in by far the best financial health - should provide those funds. ~ Steven Rattner

You can't wake up looking for the recession. ~ Jenifer Lewis

The recession is over. This phrase has been used twice a year since 1973 by government leaders throughout the West. Its meaning is unclear. See: Depression. ~ John Ralston Saul

Canada is in budgetary deficit now only because of the recession, only because of stimulus measures, and we will come out of it. We will go back into surplus position when the economy recovers. So there is no need in Canada to raise taxes. ~ Stephen Harper

The backlash against women's rights would be just one of several powerful forces creating a harsh and painful climate for women at work. Reagonomics, the recession, and the expansion of a minimum-wage service economy also helped, in no small measure, to slow and even undermine women's momentum in the job market. But the backlash did more than impede women's opportunities for employment, promotions, and better pay. Its spokesmen kept the news of many of these setbacks from women. Not only did the backlash do grievous damage to working women C it did on the sly. ~ Susan Faludi

The quality of our journalism will make or break our industry, not the recession. ~ Rebekah Brooks

It was birthright time, goddamnit. Though the recession was still hovering over the city, I didn't let it detour me. I began getting up at 5:00 a.m. and hustling over to the factories. Right on the entrance gate to the personnel office was a sign that read NO APPLICATIONS. Undaunted, I would stride forward. Don't play games with me, GM. My name is Hamper. Surely you remember that loyal, long-suffering clan. Just show me to my setup and everything will be fine. ~ Ben Hamper

Doing nothing and shrinking spending may save us public money in the short term but could cost us a great deal more over time as the recession takes hold for much longer. ~ Lucy Powell

I think the artists of the recession will end up being a very strong force in the future. They learned about survival. ~ Mark Edward

It's not all Obama's fault: His plans to rebuild America's energy infrastructure have been hampered by the recession, and his efforts on global warming have been stymied by Tea Party wackos and weak-kneed Democrats in Congress. ~ Jeff Goodell

The book looked doomed, assailed on all sides by those who'd see it superseded by the synthetic-new and those who didn't give two shiny ones. With the recession forging ahead with renewed vigour, bookselling too was going the way of papyrus, taking with it what was left of Richard's self-esteem, his beer money and his comedic persona. ~ Charlie Hill

In the United States, 95 per cent of income gains since the recession began have gone to the top 0.01 per cent. ~ Russell Brand

I realized that the artists who managed to fight through this recession have a better shot at longevity than most. The recession was a test of your resolve and passion. I think as we come out of these rough times we will be more adept at survival and will have gained the skills necessary to make a long fruitful artistic career. There will still be those that fade away but we are more likely to grow and bend with the times and prosper. ~ Mark Edward

They had stumbled either upon a serious flaw in modern financial markets or into a great gambling run. Characteristically, they were not sure which it was. As Charlie pointed out, It's really hard to know when you're lucky and when you're smart. ~ Michael Lewis

Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it. ~ Paul Johnson

Recession-resistant development produces things people need. Unsustainable growth churns out tinsel products that consumers have to be seduced into buying - until times get tough, when they quickly give them up. ~ Donella Meadows

Successful people save in prosperous times so they have a financial cushion in times of recession. ~ Brian Tracy

If there's a recession, I'd buy stocks. That's when you make money: when markets are spooked. ~ Ben Stein

A normal recession disrupts people's lives, but a long recession destroys them. You lose output, prosperity, family stability, self-esteem, and many other qualities on what looks to be a semi-permanent basis. ~ Matthew Yglesias

You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. ~ Phil Gramm

We face a far greater risk of psychological depression than of economic recession. ~ Todd G. Buchholz

Fear, greed and hope have destroyed more portfolio value than any recession or depression we have ever been through. ~ James O'Shaughnessy

A recession is when your neighbour has to tighten his belt. A depression is when you have to tighten your own belt. And a panic is when you have no belt to tighten and your pants fall down. ~ Tommy Douglas

If war is gods way of teaching geography to Americans, then recession is his way of teaching little economics to everyone ~ Raj Patel

All of this talk of recession offends me. I am delighted that bankers have less money. ~ Chris O'Dowd

You don't run a business hoping you don't have a recession. ~ Jamie Dimon

I don't think there will be a recession as a result of a vote to leave. ~ Michael Gove

I'm a walking economy. My hairline's in recession,my waist is a victim of inflation, and together they're putting me in a deep depression! ~ Anonymous

We're still in a recession. We're not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out. ~ Warren Buffett

There are fears that Britain could be facing a double-dip recession, or worse still, a double-dip with misery sprinkles and fuck-where's-my-job-sauce. ~ Frankie Boyle

I don't really feel McCain. It ain't just because Barack is black; he can make change. Just like Bush equals recession, Barack equals progression. ~ Young Jeezy

Economic crises breed war. ~ Alex Callinicos

Funerals cost so much money, and are likely to be an additional source of stress in this recession - it's sad that we don't have a more humane, less commercialized way to approach burial. ~ Meghan O'Rourke

Recession always encourages entrepreneurialism and innovation. It does that every time because when people have no options they look at other things. ~ Theo Paphitis

I used to boast that Whole Foods was sort of recession-proof. And obviously I've been proven wrong. So I'm not boasting about that any longer. ~ John Mackey

We've been in a war and a recession. That's why acccent colors with yellow and purple are popular. They're optimistic and flirty and happy colors. ~ David Bromstad

There are always, of course, job losses of a cyclical nature in a recession. ~ Tim Bishop

How long does a recession have to last before it's called a depression? ~ David Lodge

Why shouldn't he? All life is just a progression toward and then a recession from one phrase
'I love you ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I basically got an education in software on DuPont's money because they were too stubborn to admit that a recession was coming. ~ Michael J. Saylor

World needs a new order of modern economy. ~ Toba Beta

It is no mere coincidence that there is both an historic and a present relationship between community (people assisting each other) and a poverty of power due to financial recession. ~ Bill Mollison

I see nothing that points to a recession in Germany. But I see considerable long-term tasks ahead of us that have to do with markets regaining confidence in Europe and that have a lot to do with reducing debt. ~ Angela Merkel

In a recession, people want to be told for two hours that everything is going to be OK. They want to escape from their humdrum or painful reality into a feel-good drama, or a love story that transcends their daily life. ~ Alison Owen

To cut 1930s jobless, FDR taxed corps and rich. Govt used money to hire many millions. Worked then; would now again. Why no debate on that? ~ Richard D. Wolff

Everyone drinks more during a recession; they want to forget. ~ Christian Audigier

We haven't seen any African country talk about recession. ~ Oscar N. Onyema

In a recession, you must be able to call into question everything you've done before. ~ Francois-Henri Pinault

State governments generate less revenue in a recession. As state leaders struggle to make up for lost revenue, legislatures tend to cut funding for higher education. Colleges, in turn, answer these funding cuts with tuition hikes. ~ Arne Duncan

I wouldn't like Greece to stay recession. I do think that everything has to be undertaken to reconnect with growth. ~ Jean-Claude Juncker

Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his. ~ Ronald Reagan

You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. ~ Daniel Hannan

History shows that tax increases during a recession are a recipe for greater unemployment and economic loss. ~ Pete Sessions

We've gotten tremendous support. Everybody now understands how critical it is to help small businesses get out of this recession and into recovery. ~ Karen Mills