World Economic Crisis Quotes

It is ironic that Keynesianism originated as a weapon to combat depression, but became universally accepted and "successful" only during (and because of!) the postwar expansion. At the first sign of renewed world recession, Keynesian theory has proved itself to be a snare and a delusion that has gone into immediate bankruptcy. The resulting "post-Keynesian synthesis" is also the theoretical reason for the reactionary exhumation of the simplistic, neoclassical, and monetarist economic theory of the 1920s. This revival of old theory is highlighted by the award of Nobel prizes in economics to Friedrich von Hayek, whose theoretical work was done before the Great Depression, and Milton Friedman, whose lone voice echoed in the wilderness until the new world economic crisis put his unpopular and antipopulist theories on the agenda of business board rooms and government cabinet rooms in one capitalist country after another. The real reason for the recent interest in fifty-year-old theories is that capital now wants them to legitimize its attack on the welfare state and "unproductive" expenditures on social services, which capital claims to need for "productive" investment in industry, including armaments. ~ Andre Gunder Frank

In a normal time, I don't think economic policy makes a large difference one way or another. But in times of crisis it makes all the difference in the world. ~ Mark Zandi

So every dollar spent on finding some gene or hormone to explain why becoming fat is not because of sugary drinks, fried foods or unchecked gluttony is a dollar not spent on getting food for the hungry, vaccines for babies, shelter for the homeless. But the rules are made by the ones in power, these neo-Brahmins, and we must follow them if we want to survive in this global village. ~ Anirban Bose

The years of the economic depression have been years of political reaction, and that is why the economic crisis has generated a world peace crisis. ~ Arthur Henderson

Increasingly economic historians can draw analogies between the development of the present crisis and the period between the two world wars, as well as the crisis of a century ago, which was associated with the so-called great depression of 1873-1895. The latter crisis resulted in the rise of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, but also the end of Pax Britannica, as Britain began its decline from world leadership in the face of challenges from Germany and the United States. The present world crisis seems to be spelling the beginning of the end of Pax Americana and may hold untold other major readjustments in the international division of labor and world power in store for the future. ~ Andre Gunder Frank

...the centrality of competitiveness as the key to growth is a recurrent EU motif. Two decades of EC directives on increasing competition in every area, from telecommunications to power generation to collateralizing wholesale funding markets for banks, all bear the same ordoliberal imprint. Similarly, the consistent focus on the periphery states' loss of competitiveness and the need for deep wage and cost reductions therein, while the role of surplus countries in generating the crisis is utterly ignored, speaks to a deeply ordoliberal understanding of economic management. Savers, after all, cannot be sinners. Similarly, the most recent German innovation of a constitutional debt brake (Schuldenbremse) for all EU countries regardless of their business cycles or structural positions, coupled with a new rules-based fiscal treaty as the solution to the crisis, is simply an ever-tighter ordo by another name.

If states have broken the rules, the only possible policy is a diet of strict austerity to bring them back into conformity with the rules, plus automatic sanctions for those who cannot stay within the rules. There are no fallacies of composition, only good and bad policies. And since states, from an ordoliberal viewpoint, cannot be relied upon to provide the necessary austerity because they are prone to capture, we must have rules and an independent monetary authority to ensure that states conform to the ordo imperative; hence, the ECB. Then, and only then, will grow ~ Mark Blyth

We are at crisis point. I think anybody that sees this nation as being on stable economic or fiscal ground is fooling themselves. ~ Joe Miller

The sharp reduction in income inequality that we observe in almost all the rich countries between 1914 and 1945 was due above all to the world wars and the violent economic and political shocks they entailed (especially for people with large fortunes). It had little to do with the tranquil process of intersectoral mobility described by Kuznets. ~ Thomas Piketty

In its 2013 annual report on "Global Risks," the World Economic Forum (host of the annual superelite gathering in Davos), stated plainly, "Although the Alaskan village of Kivalina - which faces being 'wiped out' by the changing climate - was unsuccessful in its attempts to file a US$ 400 million lawsuit against oil and coal companies, future plaintiffs may be more successful. Five decades ago, the U.S. tobacco industry would not have suspected that in 1997 it would agree to pay $368 billion in health-related damages. ~ Naomi Klein

The fight against hunger and poverty is also predicated on the creation of a world order that accords priority to social and economic development. ~ Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva

Obama met with the president of China, Xi Jinping, in a sterile hotel conference room, untouched cups of cooling tea and ice water before us. There was a long review of all the progress made over the last several years. Xi assured Obama, unprompted, that he would implement the Paris climate agreement even if Trump decided to pull out. "That's very wise of you," Obama replied. "I think you'll continue to see an investment in Paris in the United States, at least from states, cities, and the private sector." We were only two years removed from the time when Obama had flown to Beijing and secured an agreement to act in concert with China to combat climate change, the step that made the Paris agreement possible in the first place. Now China would lead that effort going forward.
Toward the end of the meeting, Xi asked about Trump. Again, Obama suggested that the Chinese wait and see what the new administration decided to do in office, but he noted that the president-elect had tapped into real concerns among Americans about "the fairness of our economic relationship with China. Xi is a big man who moves slowly and deliberately, as if he wants people to notice his every motion.

Sitting across the table from Obama, he pushed aside the binder of talking points that usually shape the words of a Chinese leader. We prefer to have a good relationship with the United States, he said, folding his hands in front of him. That is good for the world. But every action will have a ~ Ben Rhodes

The rich fertility of China's plains and a culture of uncommon resilience and political acumen had enabled China to remain unified over much of a two-millennia period and to exercise considerable political, economic, and cultural influence - even when it was militarily weak by conventional standards. Its comparative advantage resided in the wealth of its economy, which produced goods that all of its neighbors desired. Shaped by these elements, the Chinese idea of world order differed markedly from the European experience based on a multiplicity of co-equal states. ~ Henry Kissinger

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 American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization. ~ Herbert Croly

Preindustrial living standards are predictable based on knowledge of disease and environment. Differences in social energy across societies were muted by the Malthusian constraints. They had minimal impacts on living conditions. Since the Industrial Revolution, however, we have entered a strange new world in which economic theory is of little use in understanding differences in income across societies, or the future income in any specific society. Wealth and poverty are a matter of differences in local social interactions that are magnified, not dampened, by the economic system, to produce feast or famine. ~ Gregory Clark

DB: There's a lot of talk about terrorism. In fact, it's become almost an obsession for the media in the United States. But it's a very narrow definition of terrorism.
AR: Yes. It completely ignores the economic terrorism unleashed by neoliberalism, which devastates the lives of millions of people, depriving them of water, food, electricity. Denying them medicine. Denying them education. Terrorism is the logical extension of this business of the free market. Terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketeers of war - people who believe that it isn't only the state that can wage war, but private parties as well.
If you look at the logic underlying an act of terrorism and the logic underlying a retaliatory war against terrorism, they are the same. Both terrorists and governments make ordinary people pay for the actions of their governments. Osama bin Laden is making people pay for the actions of the US state, whether it's in Saudi Arabia, Palestine, or Afghanistan. The US government is making the people of Iraq pay for the actions of Saddam Hussein. The people of Afghanistan pay for the crimes of the Taliban. The logic is the same.
Osama bin Laden and George Bush are both terrorists. They are both building international networks that perpetrate terror and devastate people's lives. Bush, with the Pentagon, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. Bin Laden with Al Qaeda. ~ Arundhati Roy

Tess is not simply presented as a passive victim, however. Throughout the novel she is shown as experiencing tension between the intractable materiality of the social and economic world in which she has to live, and her extraordinarily vulnerable, sensitive self. Hardy is particularly interested in the nature of her consciousness, and in the intense subjectivity of her experience. ~ Geoffrey Harvey

The failure of world leaders to act on the critical issue of global warming is often blamed on economic considerations. ~ David Suzuki

The 1.8 million child deaths each year related to clean water and sanitation dwarf the casualities associated with violent conflict. No act of terrorism generates economic devastation on the scale of the crisis in water and sanitation. Yet the issue barely registers on the international agenda. ~ Rose George

Until there is peace between religions, there can be no peace in the world. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism ... scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity. ~ David Levering Lewis

The struggle to create a nation and world of economic and social justice and environmental sanity is not an easy one. The struggle to try and create a more peaceful world will be extremely difficult. But this I know: despair is not an option if we care about our kids and grandchildren. Giving up is not an option if we want to prevent irreparable harm to our planet. ~ Bernie Sanders

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. ~ Henry George

It's time to step back and reexamine our hatred and let wrath subside. Are we striking out against the real problems: ignorance, fear, want, greed, and political disenfranchisement or just trying to find the most immediate scapegoat on which to lay the blame? Are we so busy blaming our fellow Hobbits that we've forgotten who is really behind the fouling of our Shire? Are we personally guilty of greed? Most of us are, to an extent. We need to reexamine our own desires, and make sure they are really needs instead of just wants. Poverty could be wiped out world wide, if enough modern Hobbits just said, "No! We will not stand for it anymore," or if those at the top of the economic ladder really wanted to do so. ~ Steve Bivans

A recent study by David Green and Laura Casper, 'Delay, Denial and Dilution,' written for the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, concludes that the World Health Organization calculated that Britain has as many as 25,000 unnecessary cancer deaths a year because of under-provision of care. ~ Walter E. Williams

Firstly, people take for granted that the E.U. has created the biggest economic space in the world. ~ Peter Mandelson

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue. ~ Muhammad Yunus

The physiological effects of hunger alone stop us from fully engaging in the world and reaching our full potential. Our bodies and brains just don't function properly when they're deprived of nourishment. And since diet culture has been aimed primarily at women for the past 100 years, hunger could be seen as one of the most effective tools for suppressing female advancement. It keeps us thinking about things like waistlines and sugar substitutes rather than the need for social, political, and economic equality. Which is what led Wolf to famously write, "Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women's history." In other words, we cannot take on the world while we're hungry. ~ Megan Jayne Crabbe

Fundamentally transforming the foundations of the economy is the biggest contribution we can make towards building a sustainable future. The current economic crisis may be painful, but it will be nothing compared with the crises we will face if we continue to grow in a way that threatens the life-support systems on which we rely ~ Jonathon Porritt

The metaphysical mutation that gave rise to materialism and modern science in turn spawned two great trends: rationalism and individualism. Huxley's mistake was in having poorly evaluated the balance of power between these two. Specifically, he underestimated the growth of individualism brought about by an increased consciousness of death. Individualism gives rise to freedom, the sense of self, the need to distinguish oneself and to be superior to others. A rational society like the one he describes in Brave New World can defuse the struggle. Economic rivalry - a metaphor for mastery over space - has no more reason to exist in a society of plenty, where the economy is strictly regulated. Sexual rivalry - a metaphor for mastery over time through reproduction - has no more reason to exist in a society where the connection between sex and procreation has been broken. But Huxley forgets about individualism. He doesn't understand that sex, even stripped of its link with reproduction, still exists - not as a pleasure principle, but as a form of narcissistic differentiation. The same is true of the desire for wealth. Why has the Swedish model of social democracy never triumphed over liberalism? Why has it never been applied to sexual satisfaction? Because the metaphysical mutation brought about by modern science leads to individuation, vanity, malice and desire. Any philosopher, not just Buddhist or Christian, but any philosopher worthy of the name, knows that, in itself, desire - u ~ Michel Houellebecq

I doubt if there is any problem in the world today - social, political or economic - that would not find a happy solution if approached in the spirit of the sermon on the mount. ~ Harry Truman

Energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth,
increased social equity, and an environment that allows the world to thrive. ~ Ban Ki-moon

The hopes of Europe's six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked, 'Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?' I replied, 'No' ... From the depths of the tragedy I want to save two million young people ... The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They were dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world ... Only the branch of the young shall survive ... They have to accept it. ~ Chaim Weizmann

Science would not be what it is if there had not been a Galileo, a Newton or a Lavoisier, any more than music would be what it is if Bach, Beethoven and Wagner had never lived. The world as we know it is the product of its geniuses-and there may be evil as well as beneficent genius-and to deny that fact, is to stultify all history, whether it be that of the intellectual or the economic world. ~ Norman Robert Campbell

...the writer of the Morte did not know what had happened, what was happening, nor what was going to happen. He was caught as we are now. in forlornness - he didn't know that this was the least important of problems. He must have felt that the economic world was out of tune since the authority of the manors was slipping away. The revolts of the subhuman serfs must have caused consternation in his mind. The whisperings of religious schism were all around him so that the unthinkable chaos of ecclesiastical uncertainty must have haunted him. Surely he could only look forward to those changes, which we find healthy, with horrified misgivings.

And out of this devilish welter of change - so like the one today - he tried to create a world of order, a world of virtue governed by forces familiar to him. And what material had he to build with? Not the shelves of well-ordered source books, not even the public records of his time, not a single chronological certainty, since such a system did not exist. He did not even have a dictionary in any language. Perhaps he had a few manuscripts, a missal, maybe the Alliterative Poems. Beyond this, he had only his memory and his hopes and his intuitions. If he could not remember a word, he had to use another or make one up. ~ John Steinbeck

(It took Dewey only a few years to shift from responsible intellectual of World War I to "anarchist of the lecture-platform," denouncing the "un-free press" and questioning "how far genuine intellectual freedom and social responsibility are possible on any large scale under the existing economic regime. ~ Noam Chomsky

Oh, and 13.1 million American people had their homes foreclosed. Because their debt, it turns out, was real; it was only the debt within the financial sector that was imaginary. It was only the people who generated the crisis who got three magical wishes from an economic genie. There was no abracadabra for ordinary people; they just got abraca-fucked. ~ Russell Brand

My long struggles as a soldier of the Chinese Revolution have forced me to realize the necessity of facing hard facts. There will be neither peace, nor hope, nor future for any of us unless we honestly aim at political, social and economic justice for all peoples of the world, great and small. ~ Chiang Kai-shek

Jesus crossed national, racial, and economic barriers to spread his Good News. Jesus' message of faith and forgiveness is for the whole world - not just our church, neighborhood, or nation. We must reach out beyond our own people and needs to fulfill the worldwide vision of Jesus Christ so that people everywhere may hear this great message and be saved from sin and death. ~ Anonymous

What we see happening with this Republican strategy is a willingness to threaten the very foundation of the world's greatest economic power. That is a very risky proposition. ~ Jay Carney

High tax rates distort economic decision making, and our corporate income tax rate is one of the highest in the world. ~ Jason Chaffetz

Global poverty is a complex web of interlinked problems. There is no one 'silver bullet' that will solve global inequality. Multiple contributing factors must be tackled in parallel. Yes, education alone is unlikely to lead to employment without economic reform to address the demand side in much of the developing world. ~ Adam Braun

Everyone in advanced meditation practice should be involved with the economic support of the spread of the dharma. We live in a material world, and it's very expensive to teach meditation. ~ Frederick Lenz

The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups. ~ Carroll Quigley