Economic Policy Quotes

“Our listeners asked us:
"What is chaos?"
We're answering:
"We do not comment on economic policy.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“It (balancing the budget) is like protecting your virtue, you have to learn to say no!”
― Ronald Reagan

“When a man wants to rob a bank he hides behind a mask, but when a banker wants to rob a man, he hides behind a corporation.”
― V.O. Diedlaff, We Can Fix It: Reclaiming the American Dream

“The notion that elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy, indeed any policy, is a gift to [founder and leader of Singapore] Lee Kuan Yew supporters or indeed the Chinese communist party, who also believe this to be true. There is of course a long tradition of doubting the efficacy of the democratic process. But I would like to think that his tradition has been expelled long ago from the heart of Europe. It now seems that the euro crisis has brought it back. I urge you all to band together in a collective bid to resist it. Democracy is not a luxury to be afforded to the creditors and denied to the debtors. Indeed, it is the lack of democratic process in the heart of our monetary union that is perpetuating the euro crisis. Then again, I might be wrong. Colleagues, if you think that I am wrong, if you agree with Wolfgang, then I invite you to say so explicitly by proposing that elections should be suspended in countries like Greece until the country's programme is completed. What is the point of spending money on elections and asking our people to get all fired up to elect governments that will have no capacity to change anything?”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment

“America has been much better than almost every other country at resisting the temptation to interfere with the logic of creative destruction. In most of the world, politicians have made a successful business out of promising the benefits of creative destruction without the costs. Communists have blamed the costs on capitalist greed. Populists have blamed them on sinister vested interests. European-style socialists have taken a more mature approach, admitting that creation and destruction are bound together, but claiming to be able to boost the creative side of creative destruction while eliminating the destructive side through a combination of demand management and wise intervention. The result has usually been disappointing: stagnation, inflation, or some other crisis.”
― Alan Greenspan, Capitalism in America: An Economic History of the United States