Stephen A. Schwarzman Quotes

The 2008 economic crisis and Great Recession forced widespread restructuring throughout the U.S. economy - not unlike a company gritting its teeth through a lifesaving bankruptcy.

I don't think it's the end of the world even if we have a recession. We'll pull back out of it again. No big deal.

The bull market, rising prices, earning lots of money, make it seem as if the good days will never end. When prices are falling and there is a recession, that also feels as though it will last for ever. Politics is the same. People simply can't imagine changing circumstances.

In the history of modern capitalism, crises are the norm, not the exception.

So I think the winners in recession are the people who produce new technology that does things better, which people really want.

The simple fact of the matter is, as I know everyone in this room knows, that the recession that this country faced when this President took office was the worst since the Great Depression.

We are watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention. And our designated opinion leaders want to know: Is Obama up this week? Is he down? And is his leadership style more like Bill Clinton's, or Abraham Lincoln's?

We got into a recession because the global economy went into the recession and we're a big exporting nation.

It's Obama's bad luck that he got elected just as the mayhem of the foreclosures, the banking collapse, and the General Motors disaster was accelerating the surge in unemployment to warp speed.

Where people are now in terms of the economic crisis, they're looking at what we think is the bottom, and I think that's when people look to film and to spirituality.

I've lived through periods of illiquidity before. Asset prices come down. The economy slows or even goes into recession. Then the cycle re-starts. We buy at lower prices with less leverage.

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We'll break out of it. It takes time.

In falling markets, there is nothing that has not happened before. The bear or pessimist sees only the past, which imprisons the wretched financial soul in eternal circles of boom and bust and boom again.

We all knew this. We all knew that it would take more time than any of us want to dig ourselves out of this hole created by this economic crisis.

In all likelihood, a significant amount of time will be required to restore the nearly eight and a half million jobs that were lost nationwide over 2008 and 2009.

I used to boast that Whole Foods was sort of recession-proof. And obviously I've been proven wrong. So I'm not boasting about that any longer.

We don't sit down and go, 'People are uneasy about the economy. Let's write about that.'

How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?

Normally, if you have a huge category that leads a bear market all the way down to the bottom - like tech after 2000, or energy in the '80-'82 bear market - you get one quick pop, and then years of lag as we fight the old war.

In history, the evidence is overwhelming: Stock market bottoms happen, and then stocks jolt upwards while the economy keeps getting worse - sometimes by a lot and for a long time.

Not every financial company toppled during the 2008 crisis, and some seized the opportunity to take advantage of weaker competitors in the midst of the tumult.

The Wall Street crash doesn't mean that there will be any general or serious business depression... For six years American business has been diverting a substantial part of its attention, its energies and its resources on the speculative game... Now that irrelevant, alien and hazardous adventure is over. Business has come home again, back to its job, providentially unscathed, sound in wind and limb, financially stronger than ever before.

An economic recession—even when it is of long duration—does not necessarily involve a decline in all trades.

I experienced the year 2000 dot com crash and the 2008 financial crisis, and it almost wiped out the company.

A stock market decline is as routine as a January blizzard in Colorado. If you're prepared, it can't hurt you. A decline is a great opportunity to pick up the bargains left behind by investors who are fleeing the storm in panic.