Mohamed El-Erian Quotes

I would like to see Greece as a case study, an opportunity for Europe to strengthen its coordination of fiscal policy.

The emphasis so far on fiscal austerity, while to a degree necessary for the countries facing market funding difficulties, is excessive when carried out across the board.

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.

The liberal fiscal spending of the 2004-08 period was made possible both by rising government revenues and national income growth and by relative comfort on the external side. After 2009, these pillars of growth began to wobble. By 2012, they were shaking.

We simply can't spend our way out of a recession.

History is replete with examples of moments in time when we talk about deficit reduction and try to advance on it around the world, that is, where it leads to job losses, not job creation.

The insane pursuit of the holy grail of a balanced budget in the end is going to drive the economy into a depression.

When there's downward pressure on growth, one choice is to adjust economic policy, increase deficits, relax monetary policy. That might have a short-term benefit, but may not be beneficial for the future.

The U.K. and almost all of Europe have erred in terms of believing that austerity, fiscal austerity in the short term, is the way to produce real growth. It is not. You've got to spend money.

It's a European Union of economic failure, of mass unemployment and of low growth.

In the middle of a recession, where we're just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.

Austerity need not be Europe's fate.

Southern Europe has not done enough to enhance its competitiveness, while northern Europe has not done enough to boost demand. Debt burdens remain crushing, and Europe's economy remains unable to grow.

If the program goes off track again due to recession, this should not become a pretext for the imposition of more austerity measures.

The more we can do to address fiscal austerity, the better our markets will do, and there is a real political shift to doing that.

Tonight I come before you to announce that the Federal Deficit will be simply zero.

The Greeks do not have the option of borrowing because nobody will lend to them.

Ireland, once an impoverished backwater from which generations fled, conjured an economic miracle…. After 2007, the party ended in a morass of insolvent banks, bad mortgages, and unpaid public debt, ultimately sending the proudly independent country begging to the International Monetary Fund.

We used to think that we could spend our way out of a recession…. I tell you in all candor that that opinion no longer exists.

Never in the nation’s history had a president proposed large, simultaneous spending increases and tax cuts when the federal budget already had a deficit.

Since taking office in 2008, the Barrow Administration failed to stimulate the necessary economic growth. Instead they have, over the more than four years, continued on a path of borrow and spend, accumulating huge additional debts.

Let me put it very forcefully: No large economy has ever recovered from an economic downturn through austerity. It's not going to happen in the United States, and it's not going to happen in Europe.

A government can't cut its way out of a recession any more than you can dig yourself out of a hole.

Greece's unprecedented fiscal effort, which was more than planned, has triggered much larger contractions of economic activity and the tax base than the original program had assumed.

Greece is at a dangerous crossroads. Other countries-Portugal, Ireland, maybe Spain-are coming behind it.