Mariano Rajoy Quotes

The moment a large investor doesn't believe a government will pay back its debt when it says it will, a crisis of confidence could develop. Investors have scant patience for the years of good governance - politically fraught fiscal restructuring, austerity and debt rescheduling - it takes to defuse a sovereign-debt crisis.

I want to see an end to sovereign risk questions over Australia.

Despite the deep reforms we are making, traders and speculators have forced interest rates on Greek bonds to record highs.

The Obama administration's large and sustained increases in debt raise the specter of another financial crisis and large future tax increases, further chilling business investment and job creation.

In a world awash in debt, power shifts to creditors.

The very nature of finance is that it cannot be profitable unless it is significantly leveraged... and as long as there is debt, there can be failure and contagion.

On any measure, Spain's bank rescue has been a disaster. A hundred million euros have been added to the national debt, ten-year bonds are at a record high and the country's credit rating has been downgraded three notches.

Defaulting on the nation's debt would be cataclysmic. The U.S. Treasury's Aaa rating is the one constant in the world's financial system. When times are bad anywhere on the planet, global investors flock to Treasury bonds because they know they will get their money back.

The real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time.

Debt, we've learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains - pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies - but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage.

If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.

Bond investors want growth much like equity investors, and to the extent that too much austerity leads to recession or stagnation then credit spreads widen out - even if a country can print its own currency and write its own cheques.

In normal times, investors should pay more attention to the credit markets because it's the energy by which everything is driven. It's the oil in the engine.

To finance deficits, the government must sell bonds to investors, competing for capital that could otherwise be used to invest in stocks or corporate bonds. Government borrowings raise long-term interest rates, stifling economic growth.

The Greeks do not have the option of borrowing because nobody will lend to them.

One of the most important causes of economic crises is “running liabilities”, or short term debt that the government does not insure. The U. S. financial sector holds trillions of dollars of such debt, including uninsured bank deposits and the short-term liabilities of other financial institutions, such as overnight loans…. Amongst the potential causes of the next crisis, the massive amount of short-term debt ranks as the most probable.

What is very negative is that in every country in Europe, the largest owner of that country's sovereign bonds are that country's banks.

I think some people don't truly understand the situation, and they think, you know, the debt limit, it doesn't really mean anything, and they don't understand the implications on the U.S. economy and on the global markets.

One thing is certain. At some point global investors will lose confidence in our (U.S.) easy dollars and debt-financed prosperity, and then the chickens will come home to roost.

The U.S. Treasury has got borrowing costs like nobody else has.

Something is missing from Main Street: Trust in Wall Street

The American banking system, which at one time extended productive loans to agriculture and industry, has today become a giant betting machine

As austerity measures were foisted upon Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and other highly indebted countries, growth was rendered even more elusive, aggravating unemployment

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.

Everybody’s kicking the can down the road of too much public and private debt. The can is becoming heavier and heavier…