John Key Quotes

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.

I think it's important that people know what raising the debt ceiling is. It's Congress giving permission to the federal government to borrow more money that we don't have, and we borrow it for the purpose of spending it.

I mean, I'm a conservative. I believe that, you know, if you borrow too much, you just build up debts for your children to pay off. You put pressure on interest rates. You put at risk your economy. That's the case in Britain. We're not a reserve currency, so we need to get on and deal with this issue.

Government bonds have basically been sold in the domestic market, so there is some sense of stability, but the amount of public debt is really severe... Japan must manage its finances with a sense of urgency.

I do not want America to default on its debt.

One needs a comprehensive concept that decides just how much debt states like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy can sustainably bear.

When you're the president of the United States and you know that the biggest issue facing you is this cliff that we're about ready to head over if we don't get this spending and debt situation under control, it's very irresponsible not to take the action that is necessary to fix the problem.

The debt ceiling at some point has to be raised. I don't think there's anybody that questions the fact that if we ended up getting in a situation where the U.S. government was sending out IOUs like the state of California did at one point, that ends up creating quite a brand problem for our country.

The American people will eventually get hurt by this accumulated deficit. That's the problem. We have too much deficit. We have to find a solution.

A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.

The debt ceiling is not something to toy with.

We have to deal with the nation's debt.

There is a belief, at least on the part of the American people, that they can borrow money forever without consequence.

We should, as a country, be very concerned about our borrowing cost.

Right now, a majority of the debt is owed to foreign interests, Japan being the largest purchaser of government debt today, soon to be surpassed by China as the number one purchaser of our debt in this Nation.

Well, I think what we need to remember is that budget deficits can impede economic activity.

I've got a chart here that shows our debt-to-GDP ratio. And while we did run deficits in the past, we now number our debt in trillions rather than in billions. And I think that represents a long-term danger, especially to the, the American dream.

Restore, without delay, the equilibrium between revenue and expenditures, which has done so much to destroy our credit and derange the whole fabric of government. If that should not be done, the government and country will be involved, ere long, in overwhelming difficulties.

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

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.

A beautiful deleveraging balances the three options. In other words, there is a certain amount of austerity, there is a certain amount of debt restructuring, and there is a certain amount of printing of money. When done in the right mix, it isn't dramatic.

If the U.S. Government was a company, the deficit would be $5 trillion because they would have to account by general accepted accounting principles. But actually they encourage government spending, reckless government spending, because the government can issue Treasury bills at extremely low interest rates.

There is a very serious fiscal-policy question of, 'Are we running our overall fiscal policy such that we as a government can pay our bills?'

The American people were really not 100% convinced that this idea of default was really going to occur, and I think the media, current company excepted here, did not help in that regard because they confused the American people about what default actually meant.

We have a government that borrows $4 billion a day. We have a government that owes trillions of dollars in debt, half of that to foreigners, most of that to Chinese investors. I don't - that is extreme. Not only is it extreme. It's insane and it's unsustainable.