Mortimer Zuckerman Quotes

The Federal Reserve - all of them - could be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, and then pouring gasoline on top of it, and then light a cigar with matches, throw the match into the gasoline, and then not notice that there is any danger.

When you're dealing with a bankrupt sovereign - like the U.S. government - you're dealing with a very powerful wounded bear. You have to be very careful because you can't know what the beast is going to do.

Deflation can be particularly dangerous when a financial system is shaky, with household and corporate balance sheets in poor shape and banks undercapitalized and heavily burdened with bad loans.

From my point of view it's impossible to cut debt in a country with new debt from another country.

The interesting thing about the China story, getting back to the macro and micro, and as dire as I think the macro story is - due to bad credit and credit extension that makes Greece and Spain and the U.S. look like child's play - when you get to the micro of individual companies, they look even worse.

We have lost control over the financial system ... by printing much more money than in previous years.

A nation is not in danger of financial disaster merely because it owes itself money.

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…

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.

The Mexican debt crisis, Latin American debt crisis, the crises of the 1990s, the Wall Street stock market crash, and other events should have reminded us, and did remind us, that financial instability remains a concern, remains a problem.

I will not let anyone tell me we must spend more money. This crisis did not come about because we issued too little money but because we created economic growth with too much money and it was not sustainable growth.

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.

He is blind indeed who does not see, in the signs of the times, a strong tendency to plunge the Union as deep in debt as are many of the States, and to subjugate the whole to the paper system.

So you know, everyone points out Greece's default record, but the history of a lot of sovereign nations is not a good one when it comes to lending them money.

Total borrowing has imploded. Private borrowing has collapsed. And, in effect, the Treasury Department is the last borrower left standing.

What I'm concerned about is endless borrowing, which is going to compromise our economy not only today but in the future. Because we know the decisions we make right now really dramatically impact us in the future, and the debt is literally getting out of our control.

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.

Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone's guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.

Financial crises are an unfortunate but necessary consequence of modern capitalism.

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.

It's true that monetary policy was too lax for too long, and the government encouraged lending to people who were unlikely to repay their loans.

Slow growth and inflation have a tendency to accompany large deficits and increasing debt as a percentage of GDP.