Walter Isaacson Quotes

Aggressive government spending during the Great Recession was absolutely necessary.

2008 was to the American economy what 9/11 was to national security. Yet while 9/11 prompted the U.S. government to tear up half the Constitution in the name of public safety, after 2008, authorities went in the other direction.

But despite historic levels of obstruction, President Obama was able to bring the economy back from the verge of a second Great Depression.

The President and the Democrats on Congress have exploited the financial crisis to advance their socialist big government tax, spend and borrow agenda.

Nationalization, unmentionable only yesterday, has entered common usage not least because an even scarier word - depression - is next on America's list to avoid.

After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don't have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.

The debate we won't be having is whether or not the debt ceiling should be raised. We will not have a situation where people will hold the American economy hostage in order to achieve a specific agenda - at least not until 2013. So we think that is incredibly important as a matter of economic good.

And taking more money out of the private economy and having the government perform as it has poorly done with the stimulus I don't think is the right way to go.

Let’s have a moratorium on press conferences …. Get off your asses and let’s do something and fix the biggest doggone crisis in the history of this country.

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.

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.

Beyond monetary policy, fiscal policy has traditionally played an important role in dealing with severe economic downturns.

I supported some very, very objectionable things in terms of bailouts or rescues, but I did it not for Wall Street, but for the American people.

I believe that the root cause of every financial crisis, the root cause, is flawed government policies.

Very clearly, government investment can and should be used to support economic growth.

Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.

I saw the government really using the excuse of a weak economy and a financial crisis to create more government and to push onto the American entrepreneurial society more and more restraints and government activity.

Civil servants are fully aware of the challenges the British economy faces. They are, after all, working tirelessly and professionally to support the coalition government through the current challenges, every day, and in every part of Britain.

We really accomplished what we set out to do with the Recovery Act programs, which was to fill the lending gap created by the crisis.

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, in hosting the G20 summit and in the budget, must display the same boldness in tackling the instability at home that they do in promoting a worldwide answer to the global meltdown.

There was no blueprint or how-to manual for fixing a global financial meltdown, an auto crisis, two wars and a great recession, all at the same time.

Surely, the best and most effective measure is to get the economy moving and shorten the period of recession or slowdown. That's the rationale for Gordon Brown's 'fiscal stimulus' and it sounds like a good one to me.

And as a result, I guess I'm just kind of a rubberneck. I'm kind of a - someone who likes to see things and likes to see these events and talk to the people who make them happen. But I don't think journalists are as important as the people they cover.

Yes. We do think that the stimulus package is raising GDP and raising employment relative to what would have happened otherwise.