Our economy has not served large fractions of our population. Trump grasped that. And rather than saying, "What have we not done right?" he said, "It's those foreigners. Let's build a wall." He says globalization is unfair to the United States.
If you destroy a firm, you can't pull it out of bankruptcy overnight.
Nationalization of private debts undermines prudential lender behavior and is a government intervention in the market.
You can't overestimate what happens when you encourage regulators to believe that the goal of regulation is not to regulate.
The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in any of the other advanced industrial countries.
I grew up in a family in which political issues were often discussed, and debated intensely.
When I said "the pocket of the banks," it is not necessarily a mercenary relationship. It is a mindset.
As a rich country, we can, in some sense, "afford" the war. But spending money on the war means that we are not spending money on other things that we could have spent the money on.
The important lesson of the deficit is - and the national debt - is we have to be careful about how we're spending money.
Countries were told they had no incentives because of social ownership. The solution was privatization and profit, profit, profit. Privatization would replace inefficient state ownership, and the profit system plus the huge defense cutbacks would let them take existing resources and an increase in consumption. Worries about distribution and competition or even concerns about democratic processes being undermined by excessive concentration of wealth could be addressed later.
During my three years as chief economist of the World Bank, labor market issues were looked at through the lens of neoclassical economics. A standard message was to increase labor market flexibility. The not-so-subtle subtext was to lower wages and lay off unneeded workers.
The momentum today behind the idea of a new global reserve currency reflects, in effect, the rise of the rest in world politics and economics, led by China.
For 60 years, since World War II, we have been trying to create a rules-based system, a global economic system. We understand that what makes our economy function is what we call the rule of law, and what is true domestically is also true internationally. It is important to have rules by which we govern our relations with other countries.
Trump said we got snookered. That those agreements like NAFTA were the worst agreements ever and suggested that our trade negotiators were snookered by these smart negotiators from Mexico or Africa. It is laughable. I have watched these trade negotiations. We got what we wanted.
America has had to turn to foreigners to finance its debt - not surprising since household saving in the last years has plummeted to zero. China is one of the largest holders of American debt.
This Iraq war has been the most "privatized" war in America's history. It has seen the most extensive use of contractors. The contractors have increased the costs; but they have been necessary - the military simply could not have done it on their own. we would have had to increase the size of the military. But the George W. Bush Administration wanted America to believe that it could have a war, essentially for free, without raising taxes, without increasing the size of the armed forces.
If the President asked you to help, I don't think anybody could refuse, unless one felt that one couldn't be effective.
I don't think anybody really thinks that one should get rid of the World Bank. Reform is one thing, but getting rid of it I think would be wrong.
There is a growing consensus that the European systems have worked better than the American: They have been able to deliver better health care to more people at lower cost.
It is unlikely that others would even demand their money back overnight, for doing so would lead to the value of the dollar plummeting; what they would get back with be worth little. But what we are already seeing is an erosion of confidence of the dollar, which is seeing the dollar fall in value.
They [political leaders ] thought the only problem was the banking system, and if they fixed the banking system, all would be fine. But the banking system and the mortgage problem were symptomatic of some deeper problems, and evidently they still haven't recognized those deeper problems.
Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist.
Most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.
I think that for the developing world there are many versions of capitalism, and countries have to choose one that's appropriate.
I think what they've been doing is largely almost in firefighting mode without a good conceptual framework - either at the micro or the macro level. Micro, you would ask: "What kind of financial or banking system do we want?" Macro, you would say: "What are the underlying problems in the structure of our economy?"
