Macroeconomics Quotes

• Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Groups, Different, Fundamentals

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• Microeconomics is about money you don't have, and macroeconomics is about money the government is out of.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Microeconomics

  P. J. O'Rourke (2011). “Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics”, p.74, Pan Macmillan

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• Macroeconomics, even with all of our computers and with all of our information - is not an exact science and is incapable of being an exact science.

  Paul Samuelson

  Information, Computer, Incapable

  Interview with Conor Clarke, www.theatlantic.com. June 17, 2009.

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• No single piece of macroeconomic advice given by the experts to their government has ever had the results predicted.

  Peter Drucker

  Government, Advice, Experts

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• Macroeconomic stability will be more elusive and that will affect all of our lives: from the risks many will face in childhood, to the security of employment at working age, to the challenge of accumulating for retirement. More financial instability will introduce more uncertainty all down the line, and that will be a very different world than the one we would have lived in only a couple of decades ago.

  Alan M. Taylor

  Retirement, Couple, Childhood

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Most work in macroeconomics in the past 30 years has been useless at best and harmful at worst.

  Paul Krugman

  Past, Years, Useless

  "The Academic Man’s Burden" by Jaime Pozuelo-Monfort, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 4, 2009.

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• Microeconomics: The study of who has the money and how I can get my hands on it.Macroeconomics: The study of which government agency has the gun, and how we can get our hands on it.

  Gary North

  Gun, Agency, Government

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• I'm not a macroeconomics person.

  Bill Gates

  Persons

  "Fareed Zakaria GPS". transcripts.cnn.com. February 3, 2013.

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• Macroeconomic adjustment programmes are tailor-made to the situation of the country concerned and no models or templates are used.

  Jeroen Dijsselbloem

  Country, Tailors, Used

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• In the area of macroeconomic policies, I think we'll see more centralization, like in the budgetary sphere.

  Mario Monti

  Thinking, Spheres, Centralization

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• When things go wrong on a macroeconomic level, it's almost always this way. People find someone to blame, whether it's blacks, whites, Christians, Jews, Muslims-whoever.

  Jim Rogers

  Christian, People, Levels

  Jim Rogers (2014). “Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers”, p.44, John Wiley & Sons

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• I think that having good data, good statistics-and the United States generally has better macroeconomic statistics than most countries-and having good economists to interpret those data and present the policy alternatives, has a substantially beneficial effect on policymaking in the United States.

  Ben Bernanke

  Country, Thinking, Data

  Interview with Arthur J. Rolnick, www.minneapolisfed.org. June 1, 2004.

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• It should be possible to emphasize to students that the level of employment is a macroeconomic issue, depending in the short run on aggregate demand and depending in the long run on the natural rate of unemployment, with microeconomic policies like tariffs having little net effect. Trade policy should be debated in terms of its impact on efficiency, not in terms of phoney numbers about jobs created or lost.

  Paul Krugman

  Running, Jobs, Philosophy

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• If one sentence were to sum up the mechanism driving the Great Stagnation, it is this: Recent and current innovation is more geared to private goods than to public goods. That simple observation ties together the three major macroeconomic events of our time: growing income inequality, stagnant median income, and the financial crisis.

  Tyler Cowen

  Simple, Ties, Innovation

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• We're living in a Dark Age of macroeconomics. Remember, what defined the Dark Ages wasn’t the fact that they were primitive — the Bronze Age was primitive, too. What made the Dark Ages dark was the fact that so much knowledge had been lost, that so much known to the Greeks and Romans had been forgotten by the barbarian kingdoms that followed.

  Paul Krugman

  Dark, Greek, Age

  "A Dark Age of macroeconomics (wonkish)" by Paul Krugman, krugman.blogs.nytimes.com. January 27, 2009.

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• A free-enterprise economy depends only on markets, and according to the most advanced mathematical macroeconomic theory, markets depend only on moods: specifically, the mood of the men in the pinstripes, also known as the Boys on the Street. When the Boys are in a good mood, the market thrives; when they get scared or sullen, it is time for each one of us to look into the retail apple business.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Boys, Men, Apples

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• Trying to avert foreclosures, once you can't just force the banks to do it as a condition of getting aid, means that you have to put some public money into it or you have to do other things that are politically unpopular. From the macroeconomic standpoint there is overwhelming need to help people reduce what they owe so that we don't get the foreclosures and we don't get people kicked out of their homes. On the other hand, there is great resistance politically to helping people, not all of whom would be worth recipients of the help.

  Barney Frank

  Home, Mean, Hands

  "The Political Scene: Barney's Frank Opinions". Interview with Michael Guerriero, www.newyorker.com. December 9, 2011.

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• I have to create in India a macroeconomic environment where the employment in aggregate can go up at a handsome rate. Once that happens, people losing jobs in one sector will not mean that they will become perpetually unemployed. From one sector, they can move on to other sectors.

  Manmohan Singh

  Jobs, Moving, Mean

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• There's no denying that a collapse in stock prices today would pose serious macroeconomic challenges for the United States. Consumer spending would slow, and the U.S. economy would become less of a magnet for foreign investors. Economic growth, which in any case has recently been at unsustainable levels, would decline somewhat. History proves, however, that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse.

  Ben Bernanke

  Smart, Challenges, Growth

  "A Crash Course for Central Bankers" by Ben Bernanke, foreignpolicy.com. Novemeber 20, 2009.

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• Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Country, Rich Countries, Socialism

  Ha-Joon Chang (2007). “Bad Samaritans: rich nations, poor policies, and the threat to the developing world”, Century

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• I've always had an interest in geopolitics and macroeconomics.

  Norman Pearlstine

  Geopolitics, Interest

  Source: wwd.com

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• Listen to the women. Women say exactly what they want. Who has concrete plans - not macroeconomics but kitchen table economics. Who will change the situation for their families, and help restore the middle class. Women are also sick to death of having their bodies and their lives treated as a political football.

  Celinda Lake

  Football, Class, Sick

  "Women Are the Deciders, But for Which Candidate? An Interview With Pollster Celinda Lake". Interview with Martha Burk, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 15, 2012.

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• Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics.

  Paul Krugman

  Important, Hayek, Figures

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• Peter Montiel has long set the highest standard for lucid textbooks on the macroeconomics of developing countries. Now in this new edition of his superb classic Macroeconomics in Emerging Markets, he has surpassed even himself. He uniquely fills the gap between rich-country-obsessed macro- and micro-obsessed developing-country analysis. No student of the macroeconomics of development will henceforward be able to do without this book.

  William Easterly

  Country, Book, Rich Countries

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