John Hutton Quotes

When nations are willing to undertake serious economic reform, we should help them to do it.

No amount of debt restructuring, even debt forgiveness, will help the Greeks achieve real prosperity. What they need is not short-term relief but, rather, a long-term cure.

So now we are pushing economic reform, bank reform and enterprise reform. So we can finish that reform this year, in September or October. Then our economy may be much more, you know, normalized.

But effective regulation at the European Union level can make a massive contribution to achieving our shared goals of improving competitiveness, jobs and growth.

It is rather unusual for Italy to be at the forefront of pro-market initiatives.

I think a major cause of present Asian economic difficulties that mainly come from, you know, lack of market economy.

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.

Everyone in the Chinese economic world knows that the country is not going to move out of cheap-workhouse status, toward the realm of 'real' rich-country corporate power and prosperity, unless (among other changes) it begins removing these price distortions.

If you want your country to be competitive in the 21st century economy, a big financial sector is fundamentally bad news.

France has to reform, to recover, and get more competitiveness.

Prime Minister Singh is to be commended for beginning the process of transforming India into a global economic power by initiating economic liberalization in the early 1990s.

We need to go faster on structural reforms in France.

Whether we are in or out of the E.U., we must deliver reform at home in order to compete abroad in the 21st century.

There are high hopes of France and what they're trying to achieve there by liberalising the labour market and other reforms. You lose some, you gain some.

Our approach to economic development must be modern, focused and in tune with the global trend.

The structures in Europe in a globalising economy need to be modernised, need to be more integrated, need to be stronger.

I am convinced that the public, large majority of the Greek people, realize that policies pursued in the past and the market practices have to be changed, in order to improve the prospects of the Greek economy. So there is, I think, strong public support despite the increases in social tensions.

We need comprehensive reform that will make America the best place in the world to invest and do business.

Germany is the biggest economy of Europe and we need Germany on board for the economic reforms of Europe, including, of course, the deepening of the internal market, resisting protectionism, and supporting further economic policy coordination.

China will stay firmly committed to the basic state policy of opening-up. We will actively and effectively use foreign investment, improve its structure, diversify its form and open up more channels and sectors so as to facilitate investment.

Europe is on an economic collision course with reality.

If you're going to do economic reform, you'd better do it in one fell swoop rather than a little bit at a time.

We have much more to fear from economic weakness in Europe than in economic strength in Europe.

When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretend payment.

In the 1980s and 1990s, radical change in economic policies fostered by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put the brakes on government planning and ushered in a new free-market supply-side era and a two-decade boom. That model has been abandoned in the new century. This must be reversed.