Martin Feldstein Quotes

A national government has to be able to spend money in a recession to make up for the private money that is not being spent.

When the economy shows signs of faltering, prompt countermoves are required. Even mild measures on the part of government can be effective in the early stages of an economic decline. ... If action is withheld until a recession has gained momentum, strong and costly measures may prove insufficient.

If we did go into a recession, something that's always possible for the U.S. or Europe, we could lower interest rates and expand the money supply without worrying about the price of gold.

If there's a severe recession, the automatic stabilizers will come into effect, and we will still try to reduce the structural deficit, but we will not try to keep cutting the budget so that we keep worsening a severe recession.

Business conditions are not the most promising. It will take time to restore the prosperity of former years. If we cannot promptly attain it, we can resolutely turn our faces in that direction and aid its return by friendly legislation.

I think that this is the most significant financial crisis in the post-War period for the United States, and it has in fact a global reach.... I think it is extraordinarily important to understand that, as we have seen in many previous examples of different countries and different times, choking up of credit is like taking the lifeblood away from the economy.

Rising unemployment and the recession have been the price that we have had to pay to get inflation down. That price is well worth paying.

Aggressive government spending during the Great Recession was absolutely necessary.

Actually, I have been very supportive of a very robust stimulus package from day one. I think this economy has to have a major stimulus initiative because the only group with liquidity is the federal government.

The entire economy, of course, is locked in a down cycle right now. Last time we weathered this was during another Bush presidency in '90. We were locked in it for a year and a half and everyone came out of it.

History shows that tax increases during a recession are a recipe for greater unemployment and economic loss.

My first priority is growing this economy in the long term, and stimulating it in the short term.

If we don't get this economy going, the numbers that represent this stimulus package are going to be small compared to the loss of revenue to the federal government for our economy.

I don't think it's the end of the world even if we have a recession. We'll pull back out of it again. No big deal.

We now have the worst of both worlds – not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other side, but both of them together. We have sort of “stagflation” situation.

There's no such thing as a painless cure for inflation.

Every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts.

We should be humble about our ability to stimulate the economy with monetary policy.

When the economy gets wobbly, people pay attention to the leadership failures.

The worst failures of the Federal Reserve have come from waiting too long tp tighten monetary policy during expansions, not from loosening it too much during recessions.

We used to think that we could spend our way out of a recession…. I tell you in all candor that that opinion no longer exists.

The Federal Reserve is playing a mind game—but with enormous real-world consequences.

A temporary reduction in tax rates on individual incomes can be a powerful weapon against recession.

The economic meltdown that would define every aspect of Obama's economy came to a head well before he became president, of course, and so did the legislation that would be the basis for everything that came after.

During an economic crisis, what matters is that the government keeps its foot on the accelerator.