James Callaghan 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.

We simply can't spend our way out of a recession.

In a normal time, I don't think economic policy makes a large difference one way or another. But in times of crisis it makes all the difference in the world.

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.

Americans know that we cannot tax and spend our way out of a recession, yet Democrats can't grasp this simple fact.

The world has conducted a massive macro-economic experiment since the cataclysm of 2008. In Europe, the fans of austerity have had their chance, and the results have been a disaster.

The BBC is locked to the reading of the economy that is run out of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls' office. They think if only you spend and borrow more money you can create growth everywhere.

The financial crisis should not become an excuse to raise taxes, which would only undermine the economic growth required to regain our strength.

In the middle of a recession, where we're just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.

Our problem is not adopting reforms, which we will do without question. It is not reaching an objective, which we will meet. But it is finding an end to the recession.

When I took over, the economy had almost collapsed. I told Malawians we needed to pass through difficult times. Two days ago I even cut my own salary by 30% to show we are making sacrifices.

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.

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.

We are all Keynesians now.

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.

Can we prevent an almost complete collapse of the financial structure of modern capitalism? With no financial leadership left in the world and profound intellectual error as to causes and cures prevailing in the responsible seats of power, one begins to wonder and to doubt.... The financial and political authorities of the world have lacked the courage or the conviction at each stage of the decline to apply the available remedies in sufficiently drastic doses; and by now they have allowed the collapse to reach a point where the whole system may have lost its resiliency and its capacity for a rebound.

As austerity measures were foisted upon Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and other highly indebted countries, growth was rendered even more elusive, aggravating unemployment

It is impossible, financially and politically, to lower expenditure to the level of our revenues in the calamitous times in which we live, and so, however painful and afflicting the idea may be, we must exist from day to day and simply await the outcome of events yet in the making …

The economic repercussions of a stock market crash depend less on the severity of the crash itself than on the response of economic policymakers, particularly central bankers.

There is a broad consensus, not only in the United States but in most of the world, that if you are in an economic downturn, you need to stimulate. Germany seems to be an exception.

The Keynesian idea is once again accepted that fiscal policy and deficit spending has a major role to play in guiding a market economy. I wish Friedman were still alive so he could witness how his extremism led to the defeat of his own ideas.

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

Doing nothing and shrinking spending may save us public money in the short term but could cost us a great deal more over time as the recession takes hold for much longer.

Popular as Keynesian fiscal policy may be, many economists are skeptical that it works. They argue that fine-tuning the economy is a virtually impossible task, and that fiscal-stimulus programs are usually too small, and arrive too late, to make a difference.

When there's downward pressure on growth, one choice is to adjust economic policy, increase deficits, relax monetary policy. That might have a short-term benefit, but may not be beneficial for the future.