Marek Belka Quotes

When Indian economy was growing at the rate of 8 to 9 percent, I think everybody was quite happy. Even when there were defects in our policies, they were overlooked, and when the economy slows down, people try to find fault and excuses.

To qualify as a recession, economic activity must decline in an absolute sense; a mere slowdown in real growth is not enough.

In China anything less than 6% growth is a recession meaning that it also causes financial problems and it's disruptive and it's a problem.

After a major loss of dynamism in the 1960s, productivity growth rates began dropping in most countries, falling by half in the U.S. in the 1970s and more or less ceasing altogether in France, Germany and Britain in the late 1990s.

We had massive tax cuts in the early phases of the [George W.] Bush years… The decade following was the worst growth rate in over 60 years.

It's impossible for China to keep 10 to 15% growth annually. The economy needed to slow down, and we have to learn to slow down.

America is dying at 1 percent GDP.

In China, it was always said that a double-digit rate of growth would be dangerous. Now, the country has a growth rate of 6.9 percent and suddenly that is supposed to be a catastrophe for the global economy.

Although the outlook is clouded by a number of uncertainties, the central tendencies of the projections .. imply continued good economic performance in the United States.

In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession.

One of the reasons the deficit got as big as it did, frankly, was because of the economic slowdown, the fall-off in deficits, the terrorist attacks. A significant chunk was taken out of the economy by what happened after the attacks of 9/11.

I don't think I've been too optimistic. The government believes the contraction will be around 1.5 per cent, as the central bank said. However, we're waiting to see the Commission estimate.

For a developing country, average long-run growth of 5 percent a year per capita is excellent, and 7 percent is stellar.

I think 4 percent growth is a good goal. And I think the fact that we have become used to an economy that sort of putt putts along between 1 and 2 percent is sort of tragic.

The Obama administration's attempted short-term fixes, even with unprecedented monetary easing by the Federal Reserve, produced average GDP growth of just 2.2% over the past three years, and the consensus outlook appears no better for the year ahead.

The public is even more pessimistic about the economy than even the most bearish economists are.

It's going to be difficult to stimulate the real economy in the U.S. at a faster rate than 2 percent and perhaps even less if we have that fiscal cliff in December or January 2013.

As chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers during the 1990s, I had to make projections about where the economy was going to be one, two, or three years ahead; frankly, I often found myself facing a cloudy crystal ball. Forecasting a few years out is hard enough; forecasting seventy-five years out is essentially impossible. Slight changes in life expectancy, immigration, wage growth, and interest rates could have large effects on the solvency of the (Social Security System.)

Our ability to estimate our deficit 20 years out is nil. We should not twist our economy like a pretzel over such an projection…. Growth in the short run raises the level of long run potential.

… significant spending decisions — expanding a business, buying a house or choosing how much to spend on consumer goods over the year — depend on expectations of income, employment and other economic conditions over the longer term, as well as longer-term interest rates.

From 1891 to 1972, U. S. productivity grew at an average rate of 2.33 percent, which is high, but then it dropped substantially so that from 1972-1996 it averaged only 1.38 percent. In other words, the Reagan tax cuts and deregulation did not spur productivity growth, even allowing for a long time.

What triggers recessions are abrupt drops in NGDP [Nominal Gross Domestic Product]. If NGDP grows too quickly, monetary policy is too loose. With too much money chasing each transaction, prices rise, and the result is inflation. If NGDP falls abruptly, on the other hand, monetary policy is too tight—there is no longer enough money to pay everyone who wants to work or to fund all the transactions that would otherwise take place, and the economy starts to contract.... removing several percentage points of expected NGDP growth will leave too little revenue to employ the existing work force at the wages they have negotiated. The result: rising unemployment.

Not once during Obama's tenure did the country achieve an annual 3 percent rate of economic growth.

Chinese experts noted that the U.S. economy has rebounded from the 2008 crash more strongly than some analysts here had expected, while China's own growth is slowing after several decades of rocket-ship acceleration.

My belief is India's banking industry will continue to grow at two and a half times the GDP growth rate.