Guy Standing Quotes

It is the rate of investment which governs the rate of saving, and not vice versa.

First, I think the science of monetary economics has clearly gotten better.

At the time, my personal research objectives were to provide Keynesian economics with more rigorous foundations and to tighten and elaborate the logic of macroeconomic and monetary theory.

Disciples of Keynes, who focus on aggregate demand, view any increase in household wealth as raising employment because they say it adds to consumer demand.

I think what Bob Shiller and I are doing is we're focusing on macroeconomics and the role of psychology in macroeconomics.

I don't think that much change comes from economists. I think it comes more from political realities. Probably the two giants of the 20th century, who actually did shift government policy in the U.S. and around the world, were John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman. I don't see anybody in our system who is at that level of influence.

In my early days, I wrote my dissertation for MIT at the London School of Economics, really under James Meade, but my dissertation was five chapters on the theory of capital movement, but it didn't mention money.

Economics has paid a terrible price for its dalliances with the Keynesian and neoclassical theories.

If you believe that markets operate in Alan Greenspan fashion, then you don't inquire into the details.

People like, George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sax, Dean Baker, Robert Poland, Larry Summers have said they all support a transaction tax.

Capitalism has proven to be the only system that works, but the problem with capitalism is that extreme wealth ends up in the hands of a few people.

Weirdly enough, I'm a macroeconomics enthusiast.

There's nothing in Keynesian economics that would allow you to solve stagflation. But there's nothing in neoclassical economics that would allow you to solve stagflation, either.

Keynes's contribution was not just to advocate spending government money in the middle of a recession. Every government had done that going back to the days of the Irish potato famine. What he gave to us was a way of thinking about the magnitude and the dimensions and so forth.

The human capital of most macroeconomists, heavily invested in demand management, was wiped out by the policy failures of the 1970s.

The income distribution system constructed in the 20th century has broken down, and it will not come back.

My A-levels were physics, chemistry and maths. Science is fascinating but I wouldn't say I have used it since then. I decided to do economics.

The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief. So does a fairy story or an animated cartoon. This means that no matter how soberly the financial experts dress, no matter how dry their language, the economy they worship can only ever be as plausible as an episode of 'SpongeBob SquarePants.'

For people who grew up in the last four decades of the 20th century, it is hard to grasp the concept of negative interest rates. How is it even possible? If interest rates are the price of money, is the marketplace broadcasting that money is on sale? Are we just giving it away?

I may be a dreamer, but I think monetary economics should be a hot topic.

Economists often get the market wrong.

I don't think Keynesian Monetarism has to be Democrat or Republican.

Interest rates are to asset prices what gravity is to the apple. When there are low interest rates, there is a very low gravitational pull on asset prices.

I've always believed that a speculative bubble need not lead to a recession, as long as interest rates are cut quickly enough to stimulate alternative investments. But I had to face the fact that speculative bubbles usually are followed by recessions. My excuse has been that this was because the policy makers moved too slowly - that central banks were typically too slow to cut interest rates in the face of a burst bubble, giving the downturn time to build up a lot of momentum.

Want and effective demand are not the same thing. If they were, the poorest nations would be the ones to display the most vigorous demand.