Edward H. Harriman Simmons Quotes

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

There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash..

When wealth concentrates at the very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy.

Financial firms believed that if a crisis developed, the insatiable demand for exotic [financial] products would dissipate only slowly. They were mistaken.

Banks are employing risky derivatives strategies to goose up returns….the interbank market could freeze up, and one could well have a full blown financial crisis.

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.

It's going to be tough because the economy is going to be getting worse for a while. And it might fall off a cliff if this doesn't pass. But nobody will ever know that if it does.

Alas, in 1929 came the Stock Market crash and everything changed and became worrisome. People started practicing conservatism because of financial losses, myself included.

There's a loss of faith in the banking system that for so long has been the backbone of prosperity and growth.

There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.

Uncertainty is killing this economy.

The upward economic movement in America has undoubtedly reached its end – the crisis has come.

Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over.

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.

Nothing would assure a recession more than a significant drop in housing prices.

From time to time, capitalism has a tendency to implode.

This crash is not going to have much effect on business.

Economic downturns in the United States generally occur when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to keep inflation in check When the Fed's Open Market Committee believes that it has brought inflation under control, it can start to lower rates and reverse the downturn. But the recession that began in 2007 [The Great Recession] was unusual: since the Fed did not casuse that downturn by tightening monetary policy, it could not reverse it by lowering short term interest rates. The downturn was the result of market mispricing assets, including financial assets such as equities and mortgage-backed securities and real assets such as housing.

The economic times we are facing... are arguably the worst they've been in 60 years. And I think it's going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought.

I tell you, the economy is in bad shape. In fact, the economy is so bad, President Barack Obama's new slogan is 'Spare Change You Can Believe In.'

I was asked what I thought about the recession. I thought about it and decided not to take part.

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.

Wall Street is in trouble because Main Street is broke.

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

A collapse in U.S. stock prices certainly would cause a lot of white knuckles on Wall Street.