“Banks are going to fail, so keep them individually small so that the failure of one can’t upset things.”
Paul Volker (former Chairman of the Reserve bank and economic adviser for Obama)
“We can argue about how deep it [the downturn] is going to be, but it is going to go on a while.”
Volker again
“America is still the number one power in the world. Is it the only one? No, it isn’t.”
Nicholas Sarkozy enjoying the decline of US power after the G20 meeting in Washington
“The worst is yet to come.”
IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard on the economic crisis
“I’ve always been a positive person and optimistic, but I don’t see a solution here.”
Former Goldman Sachs chairman, John Whitehead, at the November 12 Reuters Global Finance Summit in New York
“You could go out and give a million dollars to a charity tomorrow to help the homeless. You could argue that it is just wasted…
You are helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason. They are just a drag on the whole community…
Society might have been better off without them but we are supposed to look after the disadvantaged and so we do it.”
Gerry Harvey, owner of Harvey Norman, personal fortune est. $1.6 billion. It’s nice to know you care, Gerry.
“I would line them up against the wall and shoot them, all the short sellers.”
Gerry Harvey targets a group society would genuinely be better off without
Couldn’t you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here?”
Democrat Congressman Gary Ackerman pours scorn on the CEOs of GM, Ford and Crysler who all chose to fly private jets to Washington to plead for a government bailout
“I think many young people in Japan are afraid of the future, and that fear is sometimes turning to anger. Reading comics might only be the start.”
Japanese anti-poverty activist Kosuke Hashimoto on news that a manga version of Marx’s Capital is set to hit bookstores
