Edward C. Prescott Quotes

Fixing the pension system was one of the biggest problems Rhode Island faced.

Legislators should demand that we not go through the entire pension reform debate just to apply a band-aid when this patient needs a quadruple bypass.

Pension reform can be hard to talk about. In the long run, reform now means fewer demands for layoffs and less draconian measures in the future. It's in the best interest of all Californians to fix this system now.

Union leaders argue that pension shortfalls account for a proportionally tiny portion of governments' financial problems, and by all accounts, there are plenty of parties to blame for the growth in payrolls and obligations.

There are tons of examples of U.K. and European mistakes. A classic one is pensions. That's obviously not an America-specific thing. The British and European economies are suffering under the weight of what is to come. The next great Ponzi scheme after Madoff is probably pensions.

Europe is on an economic collision course with reality.

The way you create deflation is you create an asset bubble.

Where public pensions are concerned, many jurisdictions are running out of road.

The real Social Security crisis is that the government does not have the money to redeem its IOUs.

The great fear of every patriot at this moment relates to our currency. The vast over issues of paper money have raised prices to such a pitch as to make the expenses of the Government enormous.... The poor suffer from this enormous inflation of currency. Beef is 1.25 per lb—Butter $4—Eggs 3—clothing is unobtainable ... coffee is $8—sugar 3, etc. so on. Shoes cannot be had under $50 to $60 the pr. for very common ones. God only knows where all this will stop.

I have 13 bankers in my office, and they say that if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II.

Nothing so weakens governments as persistent inflation.

The problem is that the U.S. government is the biggest debtor in the world, and those depending on it to take care of them will only become poorer.

The most famous and one of the most thoroughgoing opponents of bank credit was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson reacted to the panic of 1819 as a confirmation of his pessimistic views on banks.

The interest on our debt is going to collapse this country.

In the United States, after World War II, it took about two decades for the message to slowly seep in that inflation was going to be a permanent fact of the American way of life.

Americans have seen the value of the dollar slowly decline due to the steady erosion of inflation.

The rise in the price of gold is a sign that capitalism has stumbled.

The pension system ties you to companies much longer in Japan.

We spend too much, we borrow too much, and we distort the markets. The bigger the distortions have lasted, the bigger the bust will be.

Look at the Weimar Republic and their hyperinflation in the early '20s. It didn't happen overnight. I've used the analogy, it's a lot like soybeans: you plant 'em, you wait. Conditions take some time. You need some sun; you need some water, but ultimately things start to grow, and are we in that phase or not?

Government pensions are among the largest cost drivers for state and local governments.

Observers and even some officials raise questions about the future of Greece as part of the Eurozone, while the Eurozone itself struggles to deal with fundamental flaws at the heart of its architecture.

If the Fed is omniscient, why didn't they pull back on the excess money supply that inflated the massive housing bubble that popped so disastrously back in 2008?

It is my hope that I will be able to work with legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle and Gov. Hickenlooper to find a solution to fix our ailing pension system.