David Stockman Quotes

Long before we wake up from our dream of prosperity through an inflated currency, our gold … will have vanished and no rate of interest will tempt it to return.

To paraphrase Hemingway, people go broke slowly and then all at once. We've been slowly going broke for years, but now it's happening all at once as the world's capital markets are demanding action from us, yet Obama assumes we'll just go borrow another cup of sugar from some increasingly impatient neighbor. We cannot knock on anyone's door anymore. And we don't have any time to wait for Washington to start behaving responsibly. We'll be Greece before these D.C. politicians' false promises are over. We must force government to live within its means, just as every business and household does.

If the American government can't stand behind the dollar, the world's benchmark currency, then the global financial system will very likely enter a new era in which there is much less trade and much less economic growth. It would be, by most accounts, the largest self-imposed financial disaster in history.

But if our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won't have much strength and, eventually, we won't have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy.'

The Medium of Exchange, the only thing which gives life to Business, Employs the Poor, Feeds the Hungry, and Cloaths the Naked, is so Exhausted; that in a little time we shall not have wherewith to Buy our Daily Bread, much less to pay our Debts or Taxes

Massive runs on short-term debt helped trigger the Great Recession.

It's almost 10 years since the 2008 crisis, but we all still remember the consequences of ignoring threats to the public finances.

The U.S. dollar is in terminal decline. America is tragically bankrupt, unable to pay its lenders without printing the dollars to do so, and enmeshed in an economic depression. The clock is ticking until the dollar faces a crisis of confidence like every other bubble before it.

As boom- and bust-prone as high finance always has been and remains, the greatest systemic risk to our economy is not Wall Street. It's the growing federal debt (and weakening dollar) being enacted by those Washington politicians - the ones who want to protect us from Wall Street.

Despite Russia's move to raise interest rates this week, the value of the ruble has continued to crash. Russia's economy is so bad, Edward Snowden had to put government secrets on Craigslist.

Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it.

No amount of debt restructuring, even debt forgiveness, will help the Greeks achieve real prosperity. What they need is not short-term relief but, rather, a long-term cure.

I think money is due for some sort of collapse. People are going to realize that money has a half-life, like radioactive elements.

We have got to cut the spending. We have got to fix Medicare and Social Security. And actually, if we don't cut spending, this country is already broke. We are going off the financial cliff: the big cliff that is going to cause a total economic collapse of America.

Once our country is fully engulfed in a debt crisis, our economy will be torn apart, and every American will be a victim of the federal government's failure to prevent this disaster.

It is simply science fiction fantasy to say that, if you do not raise the debt ceiling, that everything is going to collapse.

President Obama's call for nearly a half-trillion dollars in more government stimulus when America has more than $14 trillion in debt is guided by his mistaken belief that we can spend our way to prosperity.

You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.

If we bankrupt America, we will all pay the price.

I think the IMF helped to detonate the Indonesian crisis.

The reality for us in America is that we will never get out of debt with more than 15 million people out of work.

The experience of the '90s, whether it's the '94 peso crisis or the '97 crisis in Asia, the '98 crisis, even the 2001 crisis, is that we recovered pretty readily. There wasn't great consequence.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.

If our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won't have much strength and, eventually, we won't have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy.'

The problem with not saving is it can often mean you're - a crisis away from, as we've seen in some cases, living in your car or losing your home or - having your lights shut off.