Andre Maurois Quotes


Ministers would have been hard put to alter the harvests or bring orders to industry. But they were ministers and they had to do something.


Citations

Andre Maurois, 1885-1967, French writer and historian, Comment on the limitations of high government officials to deal with a poor economy, Disraeli, 1927

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Later in the Great Recession of 2008, almost everyone realized what the queen had observed years earlier.


There was a financial crisis in the country and the world when highly risky home mortgage loans defaulted leaving investors and speculators in mortgage-backed securities in a poor position. The investors had been reaping very high interest rates for their risky investments, but this was the first time that this form of risky investment had failed. The investors, of course were looking for a bailout from government. When the Bush administration failed to bail out investment bank, Lehman, there was a panic and the banking system of the country and much of the world froze up. Bush and his Secretary reversed their bailout of speculators policy and provided various assistants and bailouts to the very bankers and other investors who had caused the economic meltdown. The policy was continued by the Obama administration although the bailouts were just as distasteful to Obama as they were to Bush, but most economists agree that the two presidents very distasteful and unpopular bailout actions probably saved the nation from a massive depression. After being bailed out by the taxpayers, the Bankers then paid themselves exorbitant bonuses while the results of their management put 10 percent of the country out of work.


There have always been economic and political ideologues. However in the George W. Bush administration ideological purity was a key criterion for appointment, and many appointments were made of ideologues who had no experience and had accomplished little previously. This quotation was a criticism of the unfettered free market ideology of so many of the Bush appointees. Critics like Bernstein saw this ideological focus as opposed to pragmatism, as responsible for the poor economic record of the Bush administration. Apologists for Bush and conservative economic ideology attribute the economic problems to cycles over which the administration and government had little control.


Mellon was one of the richest men in America and a very powerful Treasury Secretary who served under 3 presidents. However, he was very independent with his own power base which was what made Norris’s line very funny. It was politically impossible for the President’s to fire Mellon.


If the economy is strong voters will often ignore of forgive leadership failures. But not in a poor economy.


In the latter half of the 20th century socialist thinking generally shifted from seeing Capitalism as the problem of society to viewing capitalism as a necessary component of modern democratic socialism. See {637821} as an example. The standard of living of all the workers depended in great part on the success of capitalism in the country. With that importance came more and more influence on government officials by capitalists. Many of the socialists and other left wingers frequently think the situation has gone too far, and it is the capitalists who are running the nation and not the citizens.


Andre Maurois
Andre Maurois
  • Born: July 26, 1885
  • Died: October 9, 1967
  • Nationality: French
  • Profession: Author

André Maurois was a French author.