Kenneth Arrow Quotes

No President has yet repealed the business cycle.

As 'Austrian' business cycle theory has pointed out, any bank credit inflation sets up conditions for boom-and-bust; there is no need for prices actually to rise.

The term 'business cycle' is imprecise. Economic fluctuations affect everyone, not just businesses, and they are, unlike astral cycles, anything but regular.

Listen, I wish economic growth only went in one direction. It doesn't. There are economic downturns. They're painful, they're harmful, and they hurt families.

Between 1857 and 1929, while regulators largely stood idle, the American economy swung through 19 national boom-and-bust gyrations that sometimes threatened to wipe out whole industries within months.

Economists are very good at saying that something cannot go on forever, but not so good at saying when it will stop.

If one wants to avoid the recurrence of economic crises, one must avoid the expansion of credit that creates the boom and inevitably leads into the slump.

At some risk of oversimplification, I suggest that the usual reason a business cycle turns into a monster is an overdose of government policy.

The way you create deflation is you create an asset bubble.

During an economic crisis, what matters is that the government keeps its foot on the accelerator.

The job of the Central Bank is to worry.

The euphoria around economic booms often obscures the possibility for a bust, which explains why leaders typically miss the warning signs.

The president has very little effect on the economy. If you want to put blame or credit, the main person who influences the business cycle is the head of the Federal Reserve Bank.

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

Unemployment is sky-rocketing; deflation is in our future for the first time since the Great Depression. I don't care whose fault it is, it's the truth.

History is fickle. We know that. The good and bad come around and go around, and go around again. There are recessions and depressions and economic boom and bust.

Inflation is lower and more stable and the real business cycle fluctuations are more modest.

Business cycles lengthened greatly during the 20th century, as central banks learned to manage national economies by raising and lowering interest rates.

I worry about another leg down in the economies causing social disruption because deleveragings can be very painful - it depends on how they're managed.

The Federal Reserve's job is to take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going.

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

When the economy is bad, the economy is the only issue.

Every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts.

When the economy gets wobbly, people pay attention to the leadership failures.

We have depressions about every 10-20 years—just long enough for the current generation to forget the last depression.