Joseph Stiglitz Quotes

It is right to intervene when markets are not working and people are getting hurt.

We want free markets, but the markets are not going to take care of themselves in all cases.

Markets that don't work we're going to step away from.

People rightly want our political leaders - on all sides - to concentrate on minimising the damage to jobs, living standards and our savings from the banking crisis.

The market economy does not automatically guarantee growth, social justice, or even economic efficiency; achieving those ends requires that government play an important role.

Just because there is a market failure, doesn’t mean there is a government solution.

The financial failure of the United States was a government failure and not a market failure.

When markets fail, as they often do, collective action becomes imperative.

While admirers of capitalism, we also to a certain extent believe it has limitations that require government intervention in markets to make them work.

However, leaving everything to the market is not necessarily good for society.

… markets don't look after social needs. Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention and I wouldn't under-estimate the value of that, but they're not designed to take care of social needs.

I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market.

The economic repercussions of a stock market crash depend less on the severity of the crash itself than on the response of economic policymakers, particularly central bankers.

Helping Wall Street regain confidence and stability was the last thing an angry public wanted in 2009 after the markets crashed. But without such support, markets can buckle and liquidity can disappear - often for decades, as has been the case in Japan.

My goal is first of all to promote a public debate about where markets serve the public good and where they don't belong. That's my first goal.

Will capitalist economies operate at full employment in the absence of routine intervention? Certainly not. Are deviations from full employment a social problem? Obviously.

The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.

The global economy is spluttering back into life. The Tories would have left it to choke to death.

Market capitalism survived and prospered after the boom-bust industrial revolution of the 19th century, and the Great Depression and world wars of the 20th century. It will recover from the financial panic of 2008-09 and Obamanomics.

It's become glib political conventional wisdom in Washington that a massive spending plan will provide a parachute rescue for a cliff-diving economy - landing it safely and with strong enough legs to move toward a healthy future.

A clear lesson of history is that a 'sine qua non' for sustained economic recovery following a financial crisis is a thoroughgoing repair of the financial system.

There is no pure free-market economy.

And then you might decide that the country can just spend maybe years or decades to regain that credit, or maybe give that county the support, the financial support that the market is not willing not do.

The market is a brilliant system for the exchange of goods and services, but it doesn't protect the environment unless it's regulated, it doesn't train your workforce unless it's regulated, and it doesn't give you the long-term investment you want.

Many markets work best with little or no outside interference. But others - especially those subject to big 'externalities' - need a helping hand.