Ray Nagin Quotes

During an economic crisis, what matters is that the government keeps its foot on the accelerator.

We really accomplished what we set out to do with the Recovery Act programs, which was to fill the lending gap created by the crisis.

2008 was to the American economy what 9/11 was to national security. Yet while 9/11 prompted the U.S. government to tear up half the Constitution in the name of public safety, after 2008, authorities went in the other direction.

We are watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention. And our designated opinion leaders want to know: Is Obama up this week? Is he down? And is his leadership style more like Bill Clinton's, or Abraham Lincoln's?

And people talk about the stimulus package and the jobs that it was supposed to create, it certainly didn't have the intended effects that everybody was hoping for or that the president and administration certainly was hoping for. So I think it's time to lay some new solutions on the table, some new ideas.

But despite historic levels of obstruction, President Obama was able to bring the economy back from the verge of a second Great Depression.

The most important point is, in a time of crisis, there is no way out but for the government to be bold and aggressive.

It has become fashionable to rail against government intervention in the economy, and the FHA is a favorite example by those trying to show the government's overreach. In reality, the FHA shows how government action during the Great Recession forestalled a much worse economic fate.

The nation’s disaster mechanisms do not seem to be in the hands of those who know how to use them.

The economic meltdown that would define every aspect of Obama's economy came to a head well before he became president, of course, and so did the legislation that would be the basis for everything that came after.

Larger deficits are necessary and proper means to mitigate unemployment as the far greater evil in terms of human welfare.

Today's misery is real unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcies. This is the Obama Misery Index and its at a record high. Its going to take more than new rhetoric to put Americans back to work - its going to take a new president.

Recovery measures work better when they raise confidence - as Franklin D. Roosevelt understood. His fireside chats, and his inaugural address proclaiming he would fight the Great Depression with the same resolve he would muster against a foreign foe, were aimed at reassuring Americans.

Yes. We do think that the stimulus package is raising GDP and raising employment relative to what would have happened otherwise.

The economy is terrible it's been terrible for years now, and the reason it's bad is not because of a debt-ceiling vote. The reason it's bad is because we have people who believe that by making government bigger by keeping people on unemployment checks and on welfare we're going to dig us out of this mess.

Finally, let's keep well in mind the most important lesson of the auto rescue: While government should stay away from the private sector as much as possible, markets do occasionally fail, and when they do government can play a constructive role, as it did in the case of the auto rescue.

It was clear soon after his election that Obama, like FDR, wanted to start dealing with the economic crisis immediately after his inauguration.

The public is upset. If they haven't lost their job, they know somebody that has. If they haven't lost their house, they know somebody that has. What do you do? When something's wrong, it's government's job to fix it, it must be government that's responsible for causing it.

People forget... that we structured it so that the government, or the people, would be repaid with a really good rate of return. And as it turns out, that aspect of TARP, that's what happened.

On Wall Street, financial crisis destroys jobs. Here in Washington, it creates them. The rest is just details.

I was elected by the people of Australia as Prime Minister of Australia. I was elected to do a job, I intend to continue doing that job. I intend to continue doing it to the absolute best of my ability. Part of that job has been to steer this country through the worst economic crisis the world has seen in 75 years.

Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs.

Unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcy - the cure is not more government spending, but helping businesses create jobs.

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.

Facts are facts: No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression inherited a worse economy, bigger job losses or deeper problems from his predecessor. But President Obama is moving America forward, not back.