Recessions Quotes

“Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Whenever a state or an individual cited 'insufficient funds' as an excuse for neglecting this important thing or that, it was indicative of the extent to which reality had been distorted by the abstract lens of wealth. During periods of so-called economic depression, for example, societies suffered for want of all manner of essential goods, yet investigation almost invariably disclosed that there were plenty of goods available. Plenty of coal in the ground, corn in the fields, wool on the sheep. What was missing was not materials but an abstract unit of measurement called 'money.' It was akin to a starving woman with a sweet tooth lamenting that she couldn't bake a cake because she didn't have any ounces. She had butter, flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, she just didn't have any ounces, any pinches, any pints. The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves.”
― Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

“The business cycle takes a human toll, as the layoffs splashed across the headlines attest. Policymakers are increasingly expected to smooth this business cycle; economists are supposed to tell them how to do it.

Wheelan, Charles J.. Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (p. 213). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.”
― Wheelan, Charles J.

“Most economists would concede that, in theory, government has the tools to smooth the business cycle. The problem is that fiscal policy is not made in theory; it’s made in Congress. For fiscal policy to be a successful antidote to recession, three things must happen: (1) Congress and the president must agree to a plan that contains an appropriate remedy; (2) they must pass their plan in a timely manner; and (3) the prescribed remedy must kick in fast. The likelihood of nailing all three of these requirements is slim. Remarkably, in most postwar recessions, Congress did not pass legislation in response to the downturn until after it had ended. In one particularly egregious example, Congress was still passing legislation in May 1977 to deal with the recession that ended in March 1975.17 At the end of the relatively mild 2001–2002 recession, the New York Times ran the following headline: “Fed Chief Sees Decline Over; House Passes Recovery Bill.” I’m not making this stuff up.

Wheelan, Charles J.. Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (p. 214). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.”
― Wheelan, Charles J.

“I was fond of saying, “A bad stimulus is better than no stimulus, and a bad stimulus is what we got.”

Wheelan, Charles J.. Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (p. 215). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.”
― Wheelan, Charles J.