David Korten Quotes

In 2008, when the global financial crisis struck, it was a bad year for a lot of developing countries, and it manifested itself in consumer confidence.

We've all got to get away from this idea that the big money's still around.

Think how weird profit margins are: We've got high unemployment and financial crises - and world record profit margins. People think the American market is very cheap. We don't. The market quite incorrectly gives full credit to today's earnings.

An overwhelming number of economists, international civil servants, and policy-makers argue that a fragmentation of the Eurozone would cause a new depression and massive wealth destruction around the world. It would also end the period of economic integration that has characterized world politics since the end of the Cold War.

Our world faces incredible economic uncertainty. The notion of what is a super power has evolved, and who actually can carry what muscle has changed.

People tend to buy dollars when there is a political disturbance elsewhere in the world.

Poverty is the parent of revolution.

Globalization causes job and income losses in certain sectors which exact significant psychological tolls. The government, therefore, has a responsibility to channel help from the winners to the losers.

Halve the income of the country and you double the risk of civil war.

As economic globalization brings more states into the global economy, … the first fruits of the process will often fall to those groups best positioned by history or culture to take advantage of the new opportunities for enrichment, deepening social cleavages rather than filling them in.

We have much more to fear from economic weakness in Europe than in economic strength in Europe.

From time to time, capitalism has a tendency to implode.

When the economy prospers, but ordinary people do not, it is only a matter of time before there is a social explosion.

The economy will bump along, with most of us struggling to make ends meet, while the same people who nearly wrecked the economy altogether will be making more money than they can count.

The biggest drag on global growth in the coming decade will be income polarization.

The financial rewards of economic change have accrued disproportionately to the most talented and well-educated members of society.

The current crisis is not simply a market failure in which prices are not functioning properly, but a profound loss of faith in money’s capacity to tell the truth.

… there is inherent in the dynamics of capitalism a natural and destabilizing tendency toward inequality of income, wealth and opportunity.

Wild globalization has helped some people much, but has hurt most.

I don't think there will be a recession as a result of a vote to leave.

By 1929, 5 percent of the population received one-third of the nation's income. The structural weaknesses of this economy plunged the nation into the Great Depression.

I believe Europe is burning financially. Europe's problems are not going to go away. They are so structural. Yet, our problems are right behind them. We cannot just look at Europe.

The lesson of 2008 is that ultimately our markets are driven by confidence.

The rise in the price of gold is a sign that capitalism has stumbled.

Some things never change - there will be another crisis, and its impact will be felt by the financial markets.