Barry Eichengreen Quotes

Never before in modern times has so much of the world been simultaneously hit by a confluence of economic and financial turmoil such as we are now living through.

Your friends, through economic mismanagement (see Greece), can harm you faster than your enemies. And your rivals falling (see Russia and China) can be more dangerous than your rivals rising. If Russia, an economy spanning nine time zones, goes into recession and cannot pay foreign lenders with its lower oil revenues — and all this leads to political turmoil and defaults to Western banks — that crash will be felt globally

Europe has, to put it mildly, been in a poor state since the transition to the 21st century. This is down to national issues, European missteps, and an economic and financial crisis that crashed down on us with enough force to dislodge the essential European idea.

The French Revolution printed money because they didn't have any, so they just printed it, and this was a revolutionary step which of course we are still reaping the huge consequences of today. It struck me that this was beginning to happen...there had been scandals where shares had been printed.

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.

With the loss of the American dollar as its own currency and its devaluation, I think that people will not even be able to afford bread and milk. They're facing a real crisis in America and I think the solution is Islam.

I think it's often discussed that leaving the Euro is an option for Greece. I think this is really not an option.

What would a loss of confidence in the dollar actually look like? Gold going absolutely nuts.

Believe me, the next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar, the rejection of the dollar is a big, big event, and then your personal liberties are going to be severely threatened.

If the Chinese bubble bursts one day, which inevitably will happen - maybe not tomorrow, maybe in three months, maybe in three years - when it happens, it will have devastating consequences for the global economy.

Since our economy is closely allied with that of foreign countries, not one of us can be indifferent to what consequences these disturbances can have at home and abroad.

Accordingly, when the supply of gold runs short, the security behind the notes is diminished, the loaning of notes is restricted or suspended, and the panic follows.

I think the IMF helped to detonate the Indonesian crisis.

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.

An attack on the scale of Sept. 11 would rock the markets and the economy.

In 2009, at the height of the global economic crisis, it was clear that we were seeing something new: the impacts of the crisis were flowing across borders at unprecedented velocity.

I know people are looking at what's happening in Washington and then they also look at events in Europe, in Greece and Portugal and other places and worry about that.

If the financial system collapses, it's really, really hard to put it back together again.

What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don't know very much.

In this age, if the currency of a major nation collapses, or its access to borrowing ends, it just can't function.

We do not want financial convulsions.

The great fear of every patriot at this moment relates to our currency. The vast over issues of paper money have raised prices to such a pitch as to make the expenses of the Government enormous.... The poor suffer from this enormous inflation of currency. Beef is 1.25 per lb—Butter $4—Eggs 3—clothing is unobtainable ... coffee is $8—sugar 3, etc. so on. Shoes cannot be had under $50 to $60 the pr. for very common ones. God only knows where all this will stop.

I have 13 bankers in my office, and they say that if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II.

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.

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