Lawrence Summers Quotes

You can’t have a situation in which companies proceed on a permanent basis relying only on cash from the government.

We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We’re inheriting a situation – when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of those crises.

There are children who are working in textile businesses in Asia who would be prostitutes on the streets if they did not have those jobs.

The United States basically accepted protection abroad as the price of post-war recovery. Now, that these countries have caught up to our level of prosperity, it is time for them to catch up to our level of openness.

The dramatic modernization of the Asian economies ranks alongside the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution as one of the most important developments in economic history.

The availability of private insurance provides tremendous insulation for millions of individuals.

Now is the time for us to strike. We must strengthen our foothold in Asia, to ensure no nation overtakes us.

It was wrong to allow Stalin to shape the European landscape of the 20th century. It would be even more wrong to let him shape the landscape of the 21st century.

It used to be said that when the U.S. sneezed, the world caught a cold. The opposite is equally true today.

It says something about this new global economy that USA Today now reports every morning on the day’s events in Asian markets.

It certainly was difficult to sell NAFTA because it’s always difficult to sell open markets.

In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.

In politics, as in poetry, it is sometimes true that it is darkest before dawn.

If you look at the history of the American capital market, there’s probably no innovation more important than the idea of generally accepted accountancy principles.

I’ve always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.

I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to it.

Global capital markets pose the same kinds of problems that jet planes do. They are faster, more comfortable, and they get you where you are going better. But the crashes are much more spectacular.

Contagion has become very much a phenomenon, and it’s a phenomenon of globalization.

But ultimately what I was impressed by during my years in government was how much the intellectual climate and the prevailing intellectual notions constrained and represented the universe within which the discourse took place.