Lawrence Summers Quotes

Certainly, 9 percent unemployment and very slow growth is not a good situation.

We now have the worst of both worlds – not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other side, but both of them together. We have sort of “stagflation” situation.

When inflation begins to rise, that's a situation we know how to deal with. When the economy is not doing well, and we're stuck at zero, that's one we don't know so much about - or we know about it that it's bad.

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

A recession is when a neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.

Slumps are like a soft bed. They're easy to get into and hard to get out of.

We are having the single worst recovery the U.S. has had since the Great Depression. I don't care how you measure it. The East Coast knows it. The West Coast knows it. North, South, old, young, everyone knows it's the worst recovery since the Great Depression.

More of the same will just produce more of the same: less competitiveness, less growth, fewer jobs.

I think we're going to have some difficulty in front of us. I have absolutely no doubt the next three, four years Europe are going to be at best stagnation. We are preparing for tough times.

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.

The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the business cycle ... present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization.

A recession is a period in which you tighten your belt. In a depression, you have no belt to tighten. In a panic you have no pants left to hold up.

… a depression is for capitalism like a good, cold douche.

Every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts.

The financial crisis and the Great Recession left firms with excess capacity, reducing incentives to invest. If businesses expect slower growth to continue, that will also hold down investment.

America is dying at 1 percent GDP.

We have the worst revival of an economy since the Great Depression. And believe me: We're in a bubble right now.

If you raise taxes during a recession, you head to depression.

A recession is when your neighbour has to tighten his belt. A depression is when you have to tighten your own belt. And a panic is when you have no belt to tighten and your pants fall down.

The world economy is in a nosedive, and understanding what I call "depression economics" - the weird world you get into when even a zero interest rate isn't low enough, and a messed-up financial system is dragging down the real economy - is essential if we're going to avoid the worst.

The more the government intervenes to delay the market's adjustment, the longer and more grueling the depression will be, and the more difficult will be the road to complete recovery.

Government intervention in the economy - through taxes, regulation and, most importantly, currency inflation - causes distortions and misallocations of capital that must eventually be unwound. The distortions degrade the general standard of living, and the economy goes into a recession (call that an incomplete cleansing). Or it goes into a depression - wherein the entire sickly structure comes unglued.

The sources of deflation are not a mystery. Deflation is in almost all cases a side effect of a collapse of aggregate demand.. a drop in spending so severe that producers must cut prices on an ongoing basis in order to find buyers.

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.

We are in the midst of a protracted wage slump, ... a troubling trend that is largely going unnoticed by policymakers.