David Wessel Quotes

…in a crisis of confidence and credit, psychology is the big factor.

I got plenty of guesses wrong on things in the past as well. I don't want to pretend I have some great insight... But when the global financial crisis came along in 2008 it was scary times if you were in the middle of building $5 billion buildings. It wasn't perfect... I think that I am the luckiest person in Australia.

Americans reading the paper, listening to the news every single day, and all you hear is things are getting worse and worse. And that has a psychological effect on consumer confidence. That's what consumer confidence is.

The global economic outlook remains fragile and uncertain. Global economic imbalances persist and we must address them or risk future instability.

You then get into a period a few years ago, where a lot of external factors that we didn't have anything to do with did hit, and some of them at the same time... devaluations, weak economies, you name it, in various parts of the world.

The economy is a collection of emotions.

At many points during our nation's history, there have been times - known in our history textbooks as 'panics' - when adverse conditions affecting the financial and economic sectors of the country have caused individuals to hoard more than they need.

What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don't know very much.

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.

The lesson of 2008 is that ultimately our markets are driven by confidence.

Relative to other economies in the world, India has a good feel to it.

The attacks on Sept. 11 really sent a shock wave through our economy, and the full reverberation of that is not yet known.

If the stock market does go through a crisis of confidence, which I think clearly will happen one of these days, no one can predict just like you couldn't the dot com crash or the Lehman crash, but when it goes down it will go down by thousands of points because everyone will panic. No one owns this market today because they believe there's a huge sunny future for the United States economy. They're buying because they think the Fed can keep the thing pumped up, the bubble expanding.

We are taking a greater chance of having another crash at a time when the world is less capable of bearing the cost.

But we can't alibi all our ills by just knocking the old banker. First he loaned the money, then the people all at once wanted it back, and he didn't have it. Now he's got it again, and is afraid to loan it, so the poor devil don't know what to do.

Economic markets are collapsing. People all over the world are suffering and people afraid. What happens when peep are afraid? They become intolerant.

It's a mistake to think things are as bad everywhere, because in Japan and China there is more cash than in the States. They are full of liquid assets. The big problem is that all the world wants to copy the American system.

We can't expect entrepreneurs and businesses large and small to take their life savings or their company's money and invest in America if they think we're headed to the road to Greece. And that's where we're going right now unless we finally get off this spending and borrowing binge. And I'll get us on track to a balanced budget.

I don't see (subprime mortgage market troubles) imposing a serious problem. I think it's going to be largely contained.

Financiers live in a world of illusion. They count on something which they call the capital of the country, which has no existence.

In China, it was always said that a double-digit rate of growth would be dangerous. Now, the country has a growth rate of 6.9 percent and suddenly that is supposed to be a catastrophe for the global economy.

I did not think I would see the day when, you know, an AIG would not be able to have its checks clear.

It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest nation in the history of the world was talking about how to keep a budget.

There are still many people in America who regard depressions as acts of God. I think Keynes proved that the responsibility for these occurrences does not rest with Providence.

Those who had been riding the upward wave decide now is the time to get out. Those who thought the increase would be forever find their illusion destroyed abruptly, and they, also, respond to the newly revealed reality by selling or trying to sell. And thus the rule, supported by the experience of centuries: the speculative episode always ends not with a whimper but with a bang.