Sovereign Debt Quotes

The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.

When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretend payment.

Starting in the wake of the 2008 GFC (Global Financial Crisis), market observers have warned of a crash in the bond market. Initially, it was believed that the trillions printed to bail out the banks would cause inflation and, therefore, a flight from bonds.

Nineteen years is the term beyond which neither the representatives of a nation nor even the whole nation itself assembled can validly extend a debt ... one generation is to another as one independent nation to another.

We borrow 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend. We borrow most of it from countries like China. They have become major creditors of the United States and have more power over our economy than we want them to. So dealing with this is not only the right thing economically, it's certainly right from a moral viewpoint.

The runs started in Thailand after the IMF intervened in such a dramatic way. Then the IMF came to Indonesia.

You had the Crash [Meltdown] of 2008, where the financial system actually collapsed and had to be put on life support, which consisted of substituting sovereign credit for the financial credit that was no longer credible.

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.

Berlin has traditionally backed a rules-based eurozone in which every member state is responsible for its own finances, including bank bailouts, with political union limited to a fiscal overlord's possessing veto power over national budgets that violate the rules.

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit.

For the next three years, we're going to see different economies work out different problems. For European economies, especially Greece, it would be through default.

The Latin American debt that reached crisis levels from 1982 would have been sharply reduced by return of flight capital - in some cases, overcome, though all figures are dubious for these secret and often illegal operations.

The interest on our debt is going to collapse this country.

What I think about derivatives is if every institution that owns or trades them is properly margined and marked to market, including end-users, including every institution, including sovereigns and multilateral institutions, then the system would be safe - if people were margined the way customers of investment banks are margined.

No nation can miss interest or principle payments without some negative impact on its credit standing.

If Spain goes under, Italy will come under even more scrutiny.

Portfolio investment, often called 'hot money' because of its volatile nature, can increase the economy's vulnerability to the vagaries of international finance. Foreign direct investment, on the other hand, is far more stable and driven by domestic fundamentals.

The Greeks do not have the option of borrowing because nobody will lend to them.

If a debt crisis results from government profligacy and mismanagement, rather than from a market failure, it is true that the central bank should not intervene.

Ireland, once an impoverished backwater from which generations fled, conjured an economic miracle…. After 2007, the party ended in a morass of insolvent banks, bad mortgages, and unpaid public debt, ultimately sending the proudly independent country begging to the International Monetary Fund.

Greece is at a dangerous crossroads. Other countries-Portugal, Ireland, maybe Spain-are coming behind it.

Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.

I fully believe that the U.S. has the obligation to honor its debt.

Public debt [is] a burden on all the people.

When the U.K. or U.S. government issues bonds to fund a deficit, the buyers are not solely in the U.K. or the U.S. - they're in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Investment banks provide direct access to these buyers.